Alkyl Halide
by Nalanzu
Summary: 2814.1-4 vs. Space Anomaly Type Theta. The anomaly appears to be winning. Hal/Kyle slash. And then life goes on.
1. Cursed

My fault. My fault. My fault.

The picture Marissa painted is sitting inside the door, its single rose and its words in black facing the wall. I couldn't look at it, so I turned it around. I can't look at anything I've painted, snapshots of loss and empty space. I was trying to remember life, to honor a memory, and instead all I've done is retrace grief and give it color and depth.

I'm trying to think of everything I've done, of the lives I must have saved somewhere along the line, and all that comes to mind is the number of people who've been hurt because of me. It's not just the ones who are close to me - _Donna, Alex, Jade, my mother_ - it's the ones that just happened to be around when someone wanted a piece of me, or the ones I couldn't help. There were forty-two people who died on the _Aurora Borealis_ up north, all those years ago when Connor and Wally and I tried to take a vacation and ran into Dr. Polaris instead. Forty-two people dead because I couldn't focus.

There are the people who died when I tried to revive the Corps all on my own and gave the ring to a complete maniac. I don't know how many. They weren't human, but it doesn't matter, does it? They died because of me, because of something I did. If I hadn't given the ring to Magaan, how many would still be alive? Not to mention the little mercenary who died protecting my temporary troops. I can't remember his name. I wish I could. Dead because I couldn't be bothered to look past the surface.

Grayven's come looking for me, more than once. How many people had to die before I even noticed he was there? How many people died because I didn't have what it took to protect them? I don't know. What did they do wrong? Nothing, except live in a city that I claimed to protect.

And just now, just so recently, Nero went on a rampage, killing, destroying, wearing my face to do it. I don't know who sent him, but they did it in my name. More faceless victims, people who weren't even near me, people who should have lived safe and happy lives. How can I not feel responsible for something like that? _If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have died!_

I'm so cold.

I visited Alex, and my mother, and there's a memorial for Jade, and one for Donna even though she came back. I don't know how long I stayed at each one. The sun was shining when I started out and it's dark now, so I guess hours. I don't know. How long have I been here?

It's funny, Donna thought that she was some kind of curse, and that's why she and I broke up. She didn't want anyone getting near her. I thought it was silly at the time. I was so sure she was wrong. I'm still sure she was. She wasn't the curse. I am. She was my girlfriend, and she died. I know she came back, but that's not always how it works, is it? My girlfriends, my lovers, my maybe-future-stepchild. I've got a lousy track record here.

I mean, you know why Alex died, and it can't be anything but my fault. I wasn't there when she needed me, and the only reason she was in danger at all was because she was seen with me. She was seen with me because I was too much of a dumb kid to learn how to be a superhero on my own. What an idiot I was. But it wasn't me who paid the price for my inexperience, for my stupidity, oh no. It was Alex.

Jade… Jenny. Jenny sacrificed her life to save mine. It isn't fair. How could she do that to me? No, I know. I would have done the same for her. I would do the same for… for all of my friends, for anyone I couldn't save any other way. But I didn't. She did. _I wish she had let me die instead._

The sudden pain and subsequent bruisingly hard fall to the ground came out of apparently nowhere. Kyle Rayner looked up to see Hal Jordan standing over him, fist clenched and fury radiating from every pore. "Don't ever say that again," Hal said.

"Why?" Kyle asked bitterly, not bothering to get up. "It's true."

"You saved me," Hal said, crouching down. "You saved the Corps. I've heard John tell stories about you. Hell, I've seen you fight. How many do you think would be dead if you hadn't been given the ring?"

"I…" Kyle looked away. "Hal, how do you face the ones you couldn't save?"

"Kyle, look at me." Hal reached out, gently, and cupped Kyle's cheek, willing the other man to meet his gaze. Sorrow and compassion shone, and Kyle's face crumpled. "It's all right." Hal knelt, drawing Kyle closer, holding him as Kyle sobbed desperately. "Ssssh. It's all right."

"H-how can it be all right?" Kyle choked out, clutching so tightly that Hal thought he heard his ribs creaking. He shifted, rubbing Kyle's back.

"Honor them by living and learn from your mistakes. That's all you can do." Hal stroked Kyle's hair, and slowly the other man started to calm. When Kyle had quieted to the point of just occasional hiccups, Hal carefully eased him back, and brushed the tears away. "Here," he said, and ringed a box of tissues to within easy reach. Kyle sat up straighter, and took the box.

"Thanks," he said thickly. "Sorry," he added after a moment, and looked around for someplace to put the used tissues. Hal ringed those away, too.

"Feel better?"

Kyle dredged up a small smile. "I guess."

Afterwards, he wasn't sure why he did it. Kyle just looked so lost, and the only other person Hal had ever held while she cried as if she would never stop had been Carol and he'd only been able to think of one way to make her smile again when she finally had. It didn't have quite the same effect on Kyle.

Carol had wrapped her arms around him, pressing her body into his. Kyle jumped backwards, hand covering his mouth, shock written across his features. At least he didn't look forlorn. His mouth worked for a moment before a strangled "Hal!" made its way out. Hal waited, but Kyle didn't say anything else, although it didn't look to be for lack of trying.

"Um," Hal said intelligently, trying to follow his own line of reasoning. It appeared to have gaps the size of the Atlantic Ocean. _Mental note, Hal. A kiss works as a fantastic distraction for acquaintances of both genders, although for entirely different reasons._

"You can't be gay," Kyle finally said, voice dazed. "You're in the Air Force."

"You can't be straight," Hal snapped back. "You're an artist." It wasn't that he hadn't been attracted to men before, or that he hadn't slept with men – he'd been and done both – but the Air Force's don't-ask-don't-tell policy had ensured that all of his previous encounters had been nameless one-night-stands.

"Hey!" Kyle looked indignant, which Hal supposed was fair. It wasn't nice to throw stereotypes, even if Kyle had started it.

"I didn't mean that." Hal rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry," he added. "For the kiss."

"About that." Kyle was blushing, ever so slightly, skin pale enough after so much time indoors and in space to show even the faintest red stain. "You probably don't have to be. Sorry, I mean."

Hal blinked. Suddenly the previous conversation seemed like the safer bet after all. "As long as you're feeling better," he said. Maybe they could take it slow.

Kyle ducked his head. "I… It helps that you listened. And stuff. Thanks, Hal."

Hal could definitely see the possibilities.

FINIS


	2. Road of Nowhere

"Each and every sector of space has a highly detailed map. These maps are stored on Oa, with access available to any ring at any time. There is no reason for 2815 to get lost." Hal frowned. "And where is his partner?"

"You're asking me as if I have information you don't," Kyle said, somewhat peevishly. He didn't want to be out there to begin with. Lost or not, unless there was something really strange going on, no one Lantern needed a team of three for search and rescue; there was a reason the Guardians had expanded the Corps to place two Lanterns in each sector.

"Ah, quit bitching."

"I am not _bitching_," Kyle said, glaring at Guy. He'd volunteered to go on this rescue mission; given the recent turmoil in his private life, the Guardians were pretty much leaving him alone unless there was a massive emergency. After a couple of weeks of that, he was ready to go stir-crazy. Well, that and Hal trying his best to be a supportive boyfriend. Kyle appreciated the effort, but it was barely short of smothering. Flighty playboy Hal's other setting, he supposed, no such thing as a happy medium.

"Wasn't talking to you," Guy replied. Hal very pointedly ignored what could only be called a smirk. "Least, not just you."

"Shut up and fly," Kyle tried to say, but suddenly everything around him went completely black. He stopped in confusion, or tried to; he couldn't tell whether or not he was still moving, or in what direction. A flickering pale construct grabbed him and pulled him straight down, and Kyle found himself completely disoriented for a moment as he was once again hovering next to the other two. Hal's ring flickered once and faded, the construct dissolving.

"Thanks," Kyle said, and looked back at the cloud he'd just flown into.

It was a massive wall of darkness, extending almost as far as he could see in all directions. According to the ring, nothing emanated from inside. It simply did not exist. The map showed what should have been there, but there was no confirmation whatsoever.

"He's in there? How big is it?"

"Shoulda brought John," Guy muttered. "That's a lotta space to search."

"Afraid?" Hal apparently couldn't resist saying as Kyle said, "You know why we left him back in 2814" in an attempt to drown Hal out.

Guy didn't take the hint. "Fuck off, Jordan."

"Both of you knock it off." Fortunately for Kyle's sanity, while the spat didn't quite resolve itself (Guy and Hal were _never_ going to stop arguing), it subsided. A construct sent into the shadow faded almost immediately, but Kyle remembered that he'd been well out of sight when Hal's construct had pulled him back, and he had the almost limitless energy of Ion to work with.

"We should set up a standard search pattern," Hal said. "Circular, spiraling inwards."

"Someone needs to stay outside as an anchor," Kyle said. "Run a line back so that we don't get lost, too."

"Like any of us are going to get lost in the dark," Guy said, but he didn't argue. "Who stays?"

"Hal," Kyle said, as Hal said, "Guy."

"Now, look here –" Guy started, right over the top of Hal's "Wait a minute."

Kyle fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I'll stay." It was easy to spin a construct out linking to both Hal's and Guy's rings – it felt almost like touching two different streams and knowing that they were from the same source. "Thread for the maze," he said, and wasn't sure whether to laugh or groan at the identical looks of incomprehension he got from both of them.

Guy vanished into the darkness almost immediately, the line flickering feebly behind him. Hal stayed for a moment, giving Kyle's shoulder a reassuring squeeze before he headed in the opposite direction. Both of them knew the standard three-dimensional search pattern, and it was just a matter of simple calculation to adjust for the low visibility. Kyle watched Hal until he, too, had vanished before closing his eyes and concentrating on getting a report back from their rings.

Information flowed back in fits and spurts, also affected by whatever was sucking the light out of the region, but Kyle could get a fairly clear picture of both of them. Guy wasn't watching where he was going so much as simply making sure that 2815.2 was nowhere to be seen. Kyle looked where Guy didn't, noting that as far as the borders of this anomaly went, it encompassed no stars and no planets. Several comets should have been inside, but no other significant bodies of matter. Guy should have come across one of the comets within his first five minutes inside, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps forty minutes into the search, Kyle started to notice inordinate amounts of dust and ice littered the part of the anomaly Hal was searching; he shouldn't have come across a comet, but Kyle wasn't sure this _was_ the remains of something so mundane. The dust had high concentrations of radioactive elements which did not occur in nature.

"Hal, you might want to come back," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous. It's only been five minutes," Hal replied. Even if the radiation hadn't been good reason, time dilation definitely counted as strange enough to call off the search in Kyle's book.

"Hal, get out here _now_." Kyle gave a tug to the construct line, but it snapped. He could feel the recoil all the way down. Something like that just wasn't _possible_, not with a construct. "Hal!"

"Kyle, the line broke." Hal sounded remarkably calm, but then again, he didn't know what Kyle did.

"Stay there," Kyle said, trying very hard not to let his voice shake. "Don't move, Hal."

"I'm going to keep searching. There's enough debris for me to keep a fix on my trajectory." Hal sounded confident, but Kyle had never known him to ever exhibit anything but confidence.

"Don't!" he all but shouted. "Please, Hal, just stay where you are."

"—Kyle?" Guy's voice interrupted, sounding both irritated and worried. "Dammit, you've been off the line for hours."

"Guy?"

"Who else?" Guy snapped. "There's a planet at the center of this thing and it shouldn't be here."

"Did you find the Lantern?" Kyle asked more out of a sense of obligation than worry about the missing Lantern; it was more important to him that his friends get out of this thing as soon as possible.

"No sign of him."

"Guy, I'm going to fix a construct holding the guide rope. Follow it back. Now. Please." This time, his voice did shake. Guy, to his credit, didn't argue, but moments later, Kyle felt that rope break, too.

"I'm heading straight out," Guy said, and Kyle nearly screamed in frustration.

"Stay," he said. "Both of you."

"Don't get your panties in a twist," Guy replied, and Kyle realized that he hadn't heard anything from Hal for several minutes.

"Hal?" There was nothing. Kyle squeezed his eyes shut and reconstructed the map of where Hal should be, and where he might be if he'd continued on his search pattern, and tried not to think about the time dilation effects of the anomaly throwing his calculations all to hell. He made what was one more hard decision in a string of hard decisions. "Guy, please stay where you are. I'm coming in after both of you. You first."

"And what makes you think you can find your way out of here any better?" Guy was still talking to him, and Kyle knew he was still alive. That made Guy the priority.

"Second time around?" he offered lightly, trying for humor that he didn't feel. What he actually had, though, was a permanent spatial sense of where the Central Battery on Oa was; as Ion he was linked directly to it. He was hoping that awareness would be enough to let him navigate the anomaly without getting as lost as everyone else.

"I ain't moving," Guy told him. "But there's some weird shit on that planet, and I don't have to get close to it to see that."

"I'll check in every five minutes," Kyle said, and plunged into the anomaly.

The darkness was every bit as disorienting as it had been the first time around, but this time he concentrated on his link with the Central Battery. It was to the left of where his sense of spatial awareness said it should be, but he made himself adjust to the link. The remnants of his snapped and dissolving construct were barely visible, no matter how much he concentrated on reading the energy, but he could follow it. Space seemed to twist oddly around him, and he had to constantly focus on his link with the Battery as well; it was as if he was looking at it through rippling water and it was never quite where he expected it to be.

Guy wasn't where Kyle expected him to be, either. He made the first check-in at as close to five minutes as he could manage, at which point Guy said he hadn't moved and that Kyle was late.

"There's something wrong with this," Kyle said.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." It wasn't like Guy to use that particular brand of sarcasm.

"Time, it's strange." Kyle tried to move faster, but he wasn't sure enough of his bearings.

"I'll try not to panic if you're late again," Guy said drily, and Kyle signed off. The second check-in went much the same way. Kyle thought he was nearly there, but Guy didn't feel the approaching energy.

"I think I can almost see you," Kyle said. "Are you sure you haven't moved?"

"I'm sure," Guy said. "That damn planet is right at the edge of my range, and I'm between it and you."

"There you are," Kyle said. He could see Guy, hovering below him. It was like moving through treacle to change his course, though, and he was suddenly dizzy. He shook his head to clear it, and Guy had vanished. "Guy?"

"Where the hell have you been?" Someone grabbed his wrist, and Kyle jerked away automatically. The hand kept hold of him, though, and he finally recognized Guy through the darkness.

"I… just a minute ago," Kyle started, and Guy's voice came out of his ring.

"I don't see you," it said. "Kyle?" There was a pause and then a string of profanity.

"That was hours ago," Guy said, holding a firm grasp on Kyle's wrist."

The blood drained from Kyle's face. If something had happened to Guy, he would have come straight in, continued talking to him. "I was talking to a ghost," he said, and Guy shook him hard.

"Let's get Hal and get the hell out of here." Guy kept a firm grip on the back of Kyle's wrist; it wasn't quite hand-holding, but Kyle wasn't about to tell him to knock it off, either. He centered himself against where the Central Battery should have been, but it was gone. He fought off panic for a brief moment and finally found it, in exactly the opposite direction. He aligned himself again, and brought up the map of where Hal might be.

"This way."

The planet loomed out of the darkness to their left, and Kyle shuddered. It was darker than the abyss around it, somehow, and yet not. It was more substantial, and he knew that he wanted nothing to do with it. Guy trailed behind him, ring sparking against the darkness. It was absurdly comforting, even though Kyle knew that should anything show up, he stood the better chance of defeating it. The planet fell behind them and was gone in what Kyle thought was a matter of minutes, but his link to the Central Battery was twisting more weirdly than ever, and he had to keep stopping to regain his sense of direction.

"What is it?" Guy asked when the pause lasted for more than a couple of minutes.

"Hal should be here," Kyle said. He'd lost contact with Hal somewhere very near here, he was sure of it. The energy signature from his construct was still there, faint but readable. "Don't you see that?" He could tell where it had been snapped.

"I don't read anything," Guy said, voice doubtful.

Kyle shook his head. "He's that way." He could see a trace of Hal's ring, now, and he could follow it. The trail led deeper into the anomaly, not quite back the way they'd come. Kyle took a deep breath and followed it down.

"We're heading in the wrong direction," Guy said.

"No, no, the signature's getting stronger," Kyle replied distractedly.

"What signature? You're not following anything!"

Kyle had to assume that his power as Ion was letting him see something that Guy's ring couldn't; the alternative didn't bear thinking about. "He has to be close," he said instead, and the grip on his wrist vanished.

"Guy!"

While looking backwards, Kyle ran straight into a green bubble. It was solid for a moment and then it pulled him inside. Hal was holding it together, face pale and sweat dotting his skin. Kyle nearly tripped over Guy, sprawled unconscious at the bottom of Hal's construct.

"He was just –" Kyle said.

"He led me to you," Hal said, teeth gritted and sounding as if he was fighting for every syllable. "He was arguing with you over my ring's energy signature and you vanished."

"Just now, it just happened," Kyle said, knowing that Hal's perception wouldn't match.

"I've been inside this bubble for two days," Hal said. "I found Guy yesterday, but he's in pretty bad shape."

Kyle closed his eyes again, recentered himself against the Battery, and reinforced Hal's bubble. "Straight that way."

"You found the missing Lantern?" Hal asked.

Kyle had completely forgotten about the missing Lantern. "No," he said. "I'm getting you two out of here."

It was a mark of how drained the anomaly had left Hal that he didn't argue. Kyle might have called it as discretion being the better part of valor, and vaunted Lantern fearlessness be damned, if Hal had argued. He wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and when he saw stars, it was as if a vise had been released. The connection to the Central Battery resurged as soon as the bubble cleared the edge of the anomaly, and a wave of disorientation peaked before subsiding, with the Battery once again not quite where it should be. The bubble weakened as Kyle regained his bearings, and he automatically strengthened it before turning to see Hal collapse.

"Lanterns of 2814," said a strange voice. The speaker wore a Green Lantern uniform, and was accompanied by a silent partner. Both of them were of the same species, not one with which Kyle was familiar, but they had a vaguely bipedal shape.

"2815," Kyle guessed. "Both of you."

"Indeed," replied the Lantern who had spoken before. "We received the distress call and came to investigate."

"But we were investigating your distress call," Kyle started. Suddenly all too conscious of the anomaly behind him, he inched the bubble away. Somehow it felt as if the anomaly was reaching out for him, trying to draw him back inside. "No one is to go in there. No one. Not under any circumstances."

"Understood," the no-longer-silent partner said, and Kyle felt a brief surge of gratitude that both of them were relative rookies who wouldn't argue with the Torchbearer. Spinning a construct out from beyond what had been Hal's bubble, Kyle wove a net around the anomaly and tied it tightly. As huge as the anomaly was, he would be able to tell if it shifted.

"Keep your distance from it," he added. "I'll make the report to the Guardians."

The anomaly remained stable while Kyle flew his unconscious partners back to Earth, remained stable while both of them were treated for exhaustion, exposure, and dehydration, remained stable while Guy bitched his way off the IV and into Kyle's living room. It remained stable while he reported it to the Guardians, and it remained stable as they told him to simply monitor the situation.

Hal, from inside a blanket on his own couch (he hadn't bitched any less than Guy, but Kyle didn't mind it quite as much, which was why he was here instead of at his own place), reached up and pulled Kyle down beside him. "Don't worry so much about it," he said, stroking Kyle's hair.

"You were the one stuck in there," Kyle said. The thought that he might have lost Hal forever simply wouldn't go away. He knew that it was paranoid, knew where it came from, knew that none of the deaths around him were his fault, but it didn't help the emotional gut reaction. He felt that he was putting Hal in danger simply by being near him, and that all the power of Ion wouldn't be able to protect the man who was becoming more and more important to him.

"These things happen. We're Green Lanterns." Hal wouldn't be in shape to do much of anything until he slept off the anomaly, and the touches of his hands showed it, but he was trying to be reassuring. Kyle squeezed his hand in answer. "Is it changing?" Hal asked.

"No," Kyle said, but as he did, he felt the anomaly vanish. He again reported it to the Guardians, who sent 2815.1 and 2815.2 to investigate. Both of them reported back that Kyle's construct was still in place but that the space inside appeared perfectly normal and matched up to the maps as far as they could tell.

"See? It's gone." Hal wrapped his arms around Kyle and kissed his neck gently. "Nothing to worry about."

Kyle couldn't shake the feeling that there was indeed something, and that nothing that big would appear and then vanish without a reason, without an unseen hand behind it, but for now he simply left his construct where it was and turned his attention to Hal. Space could wait.

FINIS


	3. Rome Burns

The planet hung in space, innocently rotating. Hal crossed his arms and checked the map of sector 2815 again, even though the last six checks had shown him precisely the same thing. The planet didn't belong there. Even without a map, it was plain to see that this particular planet was abnormal – it wasn't in orbit around a star, and it should have been frozen solid. Instead, it was to all appearances thriving.

Next to Hal, Kyle was muttering something about being bitten in the ass. Hal ignored him; Kyle had clearly been spending too much time with Guy if he'd started picking up that sort of language. The planet itself was more important – it was where the center of the anomaly had been, and it had not appeared as the anomaly had disappeared. What was more, Kyle's construct was nowhere to be seen, and he was clearly perturbed by this turn of events.

The Guardians had sent Kyle out to investigate; Hal wasn't about to let him go alone, not after the weirdness that had been the anomaly, regardless of what the Guardians said. John was perfectly capable of taking care of their sector for a brief period.

"We'd better get down there," Kyle said finally, chewing on his lower lip. "Stay behind me."

Not that Hal needed protecting, but he nodded and moved to a position that both let Kyle think he was taking point and also left Hal able to protect him. Hal was the one with experience, after all. Kyle shook his head briefly and followed a brightly lit construct down to the planet's surface. Once they got closer, the construct broke apart and reorganized itself into a shining net, drenching the ground in a weird green glow. The shadows seemed too dark, and the parts struck by the light bleached out, but Hal could see well enough.

The spot Kyle had chosen for their landing point was the center of what appeared to be a massive city. They'd scanned the surface of the planet and found signs of habitation on only one of the three continents; the majority of the planet was covered in vast oceans. There was no sign of animal or insect life, though, only vegetation. Hal's ring had picked up huge skeletons in the oceans, and smaller remains on land; the dominant life form, the one that had built the city in which they now stood, had apparently been very humanoid in appearance. The mystery here was not what had killed off all the animals, but why the plants were still alive. Hal felt a warm breeze blow past and smelled the distinct scent of oranges.

"Self-pollinating?" Kyle murmured, but it sounded distracted and not as if he were actually asking Hal a question.

Hal picked a direction at random and started towards one of the buildings.

"Don't go inside," Kyle said. Hal turned to look at him, but Kyle just shook his head. "I don't know why. It's just not a good idea."

There was only so much Hal was willing to do to humor Kyle, but for the moment, he'd avoid the buildings. There was a lot to see from the streets. The buildings themselves were made out of some kind of stone – it all looked green in the light from Kyle's construct, but Hal rather thought it had been green to begin with. Each stone was massive, and there was nothing holding them together; they'd all been perfectly fitted. The roofs were made of some sort of metallic tile, and the windows were simply empty. Hal couldn't see inside, though; the shadows were too deep.

"Do you see that?" Kyle pointed down the street. They had landed on what looked like a relatively narrow road, but Kyle was pointing to what was apparently a main thoroughfare. There were huge pillars running down an island bisecting the street, alternating with the tallest trees Hal had ever seen. The street itself would have fit an eight-lane highway down one side, easily. Hal took to the air to be able to see it more clearly, and he saw for the first time that the city was set up as a six-pointed star. There were five more copies of this road, all of them intersecting at the center.

The city really was shaped like a star, the buildings tapering off to points along a near-perfect grid. Statues dotted the smaller intersections, but Hal couldn't tell what any of them were. They were worn as if by wind and time, while everything else looked newly built. Going a little higher and using Kyle's light grid as a catapult for his own construct, Hal could see that the six major roads continued into the countryside. Each of them got narrower as it left the city walls, but Hal could see in each case that another six-pointed star city (and he was never going to look at Ollie's hometown the same way again) grew out of the roads. It was a huge hexagonal grid. Coming back down, Hal felt something tugging him towards the center of this city, and that made him distrustful.

"We should start at the outskirts," he said, but Kyle was already floating forward. "Other way, Kyle."

Kyle ignored him, moving steadily forward with a look of concentration. Hal considered pulling him back physically, but if he'd felt the compulsion, then Kyle would have, too. Checking it out was a logical move to make. Hal followed Kyle, fully aware of the odd urge and perfectly able to set it aside without blocking it out.

The center of civilization as known on the planet was a massive six-sided pyramid. It sat at the center of a sea of gravel, raked perfectly flat and in patterns of waves. It looked as if it had just been tended and the caretakers had stepped away as the Lanterns approached. The corners of the gravel ocean were marked by six obelisks, thrusting towards the stars. Hal felt an odd stirring in his groin at the sight; it caught him off-guard until he recognized it as coming from the same place as the compulsion to come forward, and the heat subsided.

A set of stairs on each side led up to the flat top of the pyramid – did that make it a ziggurat, Hal wondered – and the temple on top. The temple was the first curved building Hal had seen – it was perfectly circular and the top was covered with a huge dome. The temple was also the first building Hal had seen that wasn't green. It looked black in the light of Kyle's construct, but Hal was suddenly sure that it was a very dark red.

The walls of the temple were covered in some kind of writing – Hal could see them from where he was, and he glanced towards Kyle. Kyle was staring at one of the obelisks, concentration still writ over his features. Hal left him to it and floated towards the wall. It turned out to be covered in pictographs – his ring had no direct translation, but there was enough of a similarity to a language used in Sector 326 that the ring could give him a rough grasp.

"Year of… something… great progenitors…" Hal hovered at the wall and directed the brightest light he could summon at the pictographs, willing them to make sense. Slowly, a picture came into being.

_The sun has gone dark and only the light remains. We follow the light, for it is our salvation._

Hal smoothed dust away from the next section and turned his ring on it.

_The light itself shall go dim unless another can be found. The light nourishes the Earth itself, but it cannot sustain life. We must find another and channel the light._

Hal frowned at the script. The next sections were damaged, much like the statues and unlike everything else. The writers spoke of a sleep and of an awakening, and of a shift. The cities had been built in a specific pattern most conducive to channeling the light, some kind of energy. It hadn't been enough to save the animal life; they'd frozen or starved, but the plants had only gone dormant. With the completion of the city, there had been enough energy to reawaken the planet's flora and support its sentient population.

_It is waiting._

The final section had only a single sentence, and Hal was suddenly – not afraid. He was unsettled and had no desire to hang around for whatever was waiting. The feeling slipped away as soon as he identified it, but Hal went after Kyle anyway; as an artist, Kyle might have more insight into the pictographs.

Upon letting his own light fade, Hal realized that Kyle's construct was flickering on and off, and that some of the lights were out completely. That was a bad sign if he'd ever seen one. He found Kyle at the door of the temple, reaching out to push it open. Hal grabbed him and pulled him back.

"What happened to not going inside?" Kyle turned to look at him and pitched forward. Hal barely caught him before he tumbled down the narrow steps, but Kyle was only out for a few seconds.

"Hal?" he asked.

"Do you see anyone else here?" Hal asked acidly. Kyle had startled him, pulling that kind of stunt, and if Kyle couldn't be trusted to handle himself, they needed off this planet as soon as possible.

"When… how did we get up here?"

"We flew. Not long ago." Hal pressed a hand to Kyle's forehead, but he felt perfectly normal. "Do you remember telling me not to go into the buildings?"

"Yes." Kyle moved away, and his construct flared into life again. "But I don't know why. And I really want to go in there."

"Don't," Hal said.

"I know." Kyle shivered, and his light web sparked brighter.

"There's writing," Hal told him, and showed him the pictographs.

"Section 326," Kyle said after a moment. "As if a thousand years had gone by and the language evolved."

"It's waiting," Hal said.

"What?"

Hal pointed to the relevant section of text.

"That's not just waiting," Kyle said. "Waiting, sleeping, hibernating. The word in the current language has the overtone of waiting as a survival mechanism, but this part –" he traced the top of the glyph "- this part here is from the word for consume."

That seemed like more than Kyle should know about any language besides his own, which Hal duly pointed out. Kyle smiled. "I have access to the Guardians' databases," was all he would say on the matter.

Distractions aside, when Hal looked at the glyph again, it seemed fresher than the others. The odd compulsions, Kyle's directive to avoid the insides of the buildings, even the mentions of the energy sources, they all came together.

"It's still here," Hal said, and the lack of surprise in Kyle's face told him that Kyle had already reached that conclusion.

"It's beneath the surface of the planet," Kyle agreed, peering at the pictographs, and the light of his construct edged upwards. "It probably hasn't come out already is because the light hurts it."

"So let it out," Hal said. "We'll send it back where it came from."

"I don't think you quite understand," Kyle said, forcing the light brighter. "The people who were here – whether they were kidnapped or whether they were accidentally dropped through some kind of rift, they were attacked by this thing, and instead of being consumed by it, they melded with each other." He traced a section of writing that had been too damaged for Hal to get any meaning out of with one finger. "Here, see, it's written here. Before it got the last of them. It's self-aware, and it's waking up."

"The only thing I need to know is how to kill it," Hal said, and sent a bold of energy arcing straight into the temple. The stone screamed and collapsed, and black smoke trickled upwards. It dissipated into Kyle's light, and Kyle swore, speaking rapidly into his ring and asking for backup to arrive five minutes ago.

The ground began to rumble, and the metallic rooftops melted downwards. Kyle retreated to above his net and Hal followed reluctantly as columns of black smoke reached for the sky. The net was starting to fade – Hal put some of his energy into it, but he wanted to try something else. Energy bolts arced towards the black clouds, passing right through them. They crackled, writhing together.

"It'll absorb kinetic energy," Kyle said. "Hold it down."

The smoke was starting to fill the streets, writhing. Hal could see shapes half-forming and falling apart; for brief moments it seemed as if the street was full of people, brushing past each other and conducting business, acting like ordinary creatures on any ordinary day, and then they melted together and undulated up and out. Hal poured power into Kyle's construct, the Ion energy absorbing it with no trouble whatsoever.

"Burn it," Hal said, not sure where the idea came from. "Dissipate fog with heat."

Kyle flinched and then nodded. "Do it."

Hal threw himself towards the nearest of the trees and it lit up like a torch. Heat flared from one to the next, the outreaching branches passing the flame along. A single spoke of flame at first and then all six radiated out from the center of the city. The roiling smoke below them convulsed and heaved, stretching Kyle's web.

"Burn it all," Kyle whispered, and Hal could hear him through the crackle of the flames. He dove through inferno, racing for the countryside, and shedding flame behind him. Beyond the reach of Kyle's web, the black smoke was starting to ooze up through the ground. Hal redoubled his efforts, covering the forests and plains, deserts and mountains with every bit of speed he had. The green flames of the ring caught and shifted to yellowish-white, walls of fire fed by the wind rolling across the landscape. Kyle joined him above the second continent, the light of the fire below coloring his ring's energy yellowish-orange.

By unspoken agreement, they retreated above the atmosphere and watched the world burn.

The report went into the Guardians when the flames had died down and the heat had evaporated half of the oceans into the atmosphere. Kyle flicked a construct-match towards the planet and the swirling gases lit into a brief incandescence. Hal could see the oceans freezing from where he hovered, and he circled slowly to make sure no trace of the smoke had escaped while Kyle spoke at length, voice low and furious. When Hal was sure there was nothing left, he rejoined Kyle.

It had been exhilarating, like flying without his ring. Hal smiled. "Go another round?" he joked.

"It won't hurt anyone else," Kyle said. It might have been a deliberate misunderstanding, but Hal chose to let it slide. He grabbed Kyle in a quick, rough hug.

"Any day you're still breathing at the end is a good one," he said.

"I suppose." Kyle still looked pensive, so Hal took the opportunity to find other ways of distracting him, but the trace of grief did not fade.

TBC


	4. Cloud of Ash

**Kyle – Shades of Sepia**

The canvas stared at him, mocking in its bright white. Kyle almost thought he could hear it laughing at the utter and total lack of a mental image to transfer to its blankness. He couldn't just sit there and stare at it, but every time he tried to go somewhere, do something, he found himself with an itch in his right hand and restlessness skittering through his veins. Trouble was, even when he sat – or stood, or knelt, or crouched – in front of the bright blank canvas, the restlessness refused to go away. The palette of paints had long since dried and cracked, and still the canvas was as clean as it had been when he'd started. In a fit of pique, Kyle squeezed solid black recklessly over the dried pigments and plunged his brush into it.

The first stroke across the too-bright canvas brought a rush of release, the darkness of the paint spattered with broken bits and pieces of lost potential. Kyle grimaced at the maudlin turn of phrase his mind had supplied and widened the streak, slashing the white of the canvas into two irregularly sized chunks. The colors dimmed by their coating of black slid across the slick surface, looking for all the world as though they were drifting, and a vivid picture bloomed behind his eyes.

_"Blow the whole damn thing up," Guy said. "Get rid of it." He'd shown up in response to Kyle's report to Salaak, arriving so quickly that Kyle was sure he hadn't come all the way from Oa. He'd arrived, all confidence and smirks, and gone down to check out the planet. He'd returned with an expression of grim determination._

Disintegrating a planet was a far cry from incinerating its atmosphere; Kyle had to pull energy from its core, augmenting it with the power of Ion. Guy and Hal added their own power, but the bulk of it came from the planet itself; it was a neat little trick and Kyle might have been pleased with it under other circumstances. As it was, he was sickened by his own creativity. When the world was nothing more than a cloud of ash, he made his excuses and fled as quickly as he could.

Reds and greens mashed together to make brown, white lightened some of the black to a grayish sludge, and none of it was anything close to the cheerful array of color Kyle had had to begin with, colors that he could see simply by looking out the window. Following another impulse, he yanked the blinds closed, rummaging through the room until he found the fluorescent lamp. Its light was colorless, drowning out the remnants of sunshine that still managed to slip around the edges of the blinds. He set it behind himself, shining directly onto the canvas, and began painting the aftermath of a world's explosion.

The canvas remained the only focus he could keep over the next several days. He knew time was passing, knew that there were other things he should be doing, but he couldn't stop trying to get the image _right_. It wasn't just the realism of the image itself, but which image properly represented the loss of the planet, and what other elements should be included. Not only the actual destruction of the physical world but the cultural loss of the people consumed by whatever force had smothered it needed to be visible on the canvas, and he couldn't paint it clearly enough.

"I'm busy," he said in response to Hal trying yet again to drag him somewhere.

"That's ridiculous," Hal said. "You can't possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven't called for Ion either."

"I'm busy," Kyle repeated, mixing just a little more red into the brown on his palette. This would stand as both a tribute to the people who had fallen and a reminder of how badly he had failed. To be any less than perfect would be doing them a disservice. He didn't question why he needed the physical reminder of what had gone wrong; it was to be both a memory and a warning so that it never happened again. He wouldn't let it happen again. But first, he needed to show what had gone before.

"Doing what?" Hal said, irritation evident in his voice, even over the ring-generated phone. "As far as I can tell, you haven't left that room."

"I'm still busy." Now he had too much red, but adding more green or brown wouldn't help either. Kyle swept the mess off the palette onto the paint-sticky floor and started over.

"Get un-busy. I'll be there in half an hour."

Ignoring Hal was much more difficult when he was right in front of Kyle, standing between him and the latest nearly-rejected canvas.

"I told you," he said yet again. "I'm busy."

"You're not busy. You've been strange ever since we got back."

"Whatever." Slipping around Hal wasn't going to get him any peace, and painting in micro-strokes while dodging attempts to physically wrest him away from his canvas was not an appealing option. A few hours to placate Hal just might be enough to buy him a couple more days. He was sure he could get it right by then. "Where are we going?"

Hal threw a pair of pants at him. "Get clean and get dressed. It's a surprise."

In Kyle's opinion, the worst part of the entire date was Hal's incessantly manic grin. Hal had brought him to what might have been labeled an air show, flying planes that were generously labeled classic. Kyle had taken one look at what he was sorely tempted to loudly declaim as rusty hulks held together by a slapdash paint job before planting his feet firmly on the ground. It had done him no good whatsoever; now he was in the back of one of those antediluvian death traps with Hal in the cockpit. Under normal circumstances, Kyle would have felt secure, but Hal was piloting with absolutely no regard for either the safety of his passenger or the structural integrity of the plane.

"Put this thing on the ground! Now!" Kyle finally shouted. If Hal crashed this thing, he'd never finish that damn painting.

"Sure thing," Hal called back cheerfully, and the plane plummeted like a rock.

"Land it! Land it! Not crash! Land!" Kyle kicked the seat, which had no effect on Hal.

"You're so demanding," Hal said, still grinning, but the plane righted itself and swooped almost gracefully towards the runway. Kyle pulled off the safety belt and wriggled out of the antique jet almost before it had come to a complete halt.

"Where are you going?" Hal had the audacity to come after him, grabbing his wrist. Kyle yanked himself out of Hal's grasp and kept going.

"I don't have time for this! If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!" How could Hal call him away for this?

Hal looked at him for a long moment, smile finally fading. An expression Kyle couldn't read passed over his face before he stepped back. "You're right," he said. "I won't bother you again."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" His voice was louder than he'd meant for it to be, but nobody was around to hear.

"You figure it out," Hal said softly, and was gone.

For a moment, Kyle stared after him, unsure whether to go after him or not. Then he shook his head; he had to get the painting sorted out before he could deal with his personal life. His duty – and documenting the dereliction thereof he'd perpetrated – had to come first.

**Guy – It's All Coming Back To Me Now**

"What are you doing here?"

Not exactly the greeting Guy Gardner had expected, but this was Hal Jordan he was facing, after all. "My job," he replied, smirking just enough to get under Hal's skin. "This the place?"

The question was redundant; the planet in question – wreathed so heavily in thick grayish clouds of smoke that Guy wasn't entirely sure there was rock under there at all – fit Kyle's description perfectly, not to mention the lack of a star for it to orbit.

"Would we be anywhere else?" Kyle's voice had an uncharacteristically venomous bite, and Guy gave him a sharp look. He was staring down at the planet, though, and Guy figured destroying a world was enough to make anyone twitchy. Well, except for Parallax, who'd tried to disintegrate the universe, and then there was the Spider Guild, which had gone after entire suns, and – okay, destroying a world would make _some_ people twitchy. Obviously, Kyle was one of them. Hal, on the other hand, had an air of suppressed glee. It was creepy.

"I'm gonna go make sure you two didn't miss anything," Guy said, and took off before either of them could reply.

The entire atmosphere turned out to be full of thickly choking smoke; whatever it was Hal and Kyle had done to the planet, the surface was charred beyond reconstruction. The smoke itself was damp, and had Guy not been encased in a protective shield, he would have been soaking wet within moments. White ripples in the black ash caught his attention until he realized they were pure salt, and that the water in the air had been the world's oceans. "Way to go, guys," he muttered. Smoke still seeped out of the ground in some places, and Guy set down to examine it more closely.

Despite the smoke, his ring told him the atmosphere was safe to breathe. Nudging a wisp of coiling dark smoke with the toe of one boot, he tested the air. It tasted of burning, in the millisecond before he nearly choked on it. "What part of that was safe?" he demanded of the ring. It returned an error message. Guy smacked it with his other hand, but it now told him that the remaining atmosphere was composed mainly of a long list of chemicals that didn't seem to include free oxygen. "Safe my ass," he said. The entire place made his skin crawl, and not just because he couldn't see farther than a few feet in the murky fog.

The city in Kyle's report was no longer standing; most of the stone itself had melted in the inferno. Only few lumps here and there were recognizable as once having been constructed by intelligent hands. If Guy had believed in ghosts – which he did, really, because it wasn't like he'd never seen them before, and if this was the train of thought his mind was going to take, it was high time to get off the disturbing planet.

The taste of char lingered in his throat as he made his way up through the atmosphere only to come out at a completely different point than he'd anticipated. Reorienting himself by using the other two Lanterns as a beacon, Guy reached them in seconds. "Blow the whole damn thing up," he heard himself say in greeting. It wasn't what he'd intended, but the words were exactly right. "Get rid of it."

Kyle nodded, the vicious twist to his mouth intensifying. It took all three of them to detonate the core of the planet and pulverize the pieces into dust, but by the time they were finished, Guy was sure that they were safe. There would be no record, nothing to tie them to this place. _And no threat to anyone else,_ he reminded himself sternly. That was his primary motivation.

"I'm going home," Kyle said to no one in particular.

"I'll –" Hal started.

"I just… I need some space, okay?" He didn't wait for Hal to nod his assent before vanishing into the distance.

A grin and a shrug made Hal's mouth thin into a tight little line, so Guy added an impudent little wave. More of a mock salute, really. "My work here is done," he drawled, and made tracks for Oa.  
Somewhere between Sector 1589 and 1590, Guy found his mood deteriorating. The destruction of the planet had left a bad taste in his mouth, figuratively speaking; he had no idea where it had come from or what it had been, or what the consequences for blowing it up might be. The last thing any of them needed was the Last Member Of Species X, sworn to take revenge on the Green Lantern Corps for destruction of their homeworld. Again.

By the time he'd reached Sector 1591, Guy had decided that Hal was to blame for the entire situation, or at least for not approaching the problem properly. If not for Hal, dealing with a mysterious planet dropping out of nowhere would have been much easier. "Idiot," Guy muttered, and spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how he could get Hal restricted to Earth. Hal couldn't do much damage on Earth, not surrounded by the rest of the superhero community. Some of them, at least, had proven themselves unwilling to put up with his shenanigans.

The rookies he'd abandoned to play with Hal's inexplicable little ball of rock reassembling at the appropriate obstacle course several minutes earlier than the specified time did nothing to improve his mood, nor did the scramble to run the course in a full minute less than each student's previous best time. Senior instructors could and usually did participate in the obstacle courses, tossing out various opponents or blocks for the students to resolve. When running the course for time, however, interference was generally avoided. Guy made sure each of the fifty students currently attempting to clear the course got at least one personalized trap in addition to the various large-scale hazards.

None of the students made anything close to the time he'd demanded, of course, and as he landed in front of them, the anger and apprehension was nearly thick enough to cut through. Really, though, they'd done a fantastic job in a less than optimal situation, and handled it quite well considering their lack of experience. Those of them displaying the most nervous responses bore watching, of course, as a Green Lantern needed to be above fear, but all in all he decided he was rather pleased.

"Well done," he said, and smiled. The entire group edged backwards slightly, so he grinned. "Couldn't have asked for better. Why don't you take a 5k run to cool down, and think about where you can improve. Then go ahead and work on that, either alone or with a partner."

None of them moved, and the anger had vanished entirely. Guy let the smile fade. "Go on, then," he said pleasantly, and they _ran_. Odd behavior for a group of trainees, he thought, and left them to their exercises.

Salakk found him some time later, working with a set of weights. He'd had them constructed out of real material, and built the few frames that needed building, so that he could have a purely physical workout. There were times that the ring just didn't feel right, and this was one of them.

"Honor Lantern Gardner," Salakk said from above him, and Guy lifted the barbell back into place.

"What?" he said, sitting up.

"I've had some rather disturbing reports regarding your training protocol."

"Oh yeah?" Guy took a swig from the water bottle near his feet and stood. Salakk looked up, expression less than pleased. "What reports?"

"Your theory of 'whatever doesn't kill 'em makes 'em stronger' only works up to a certain point. Pass that point and you will not create viable Lanterns."

"I got no idea what you're talkin' about." He had a towel somewhere in this little hole in the wall. After a moment of searching, Guy located the towel and used it to wipe down the equipment.

"They were under the impression that you would perpetrate some kind of permanently bodily harm upon them unless your instructions were explicitly followed." Salakk's continued unblinking stare was vaguely disquieting, so Guy stopped looking at him.

"I never said that. Were they still trainin'? I told 'em to go home."

"One of the trainees collapsed on the field. He insisted on returning as soon as he regained consciousness. Something about fixing their flaws?"

"They were still working on that?" The irritation that had built up during his workout dissolved in a warm glow. Guy smiled at Salakk. "Thanks for telling me," he said, and went to find the trainees.

"Honor Lantern Gardner! Get back here! You are not to harass them further!"

Guy slowed. "But I'm not harassing them."

"You're off trainee duty as of this minute, Lantern Gardner." Salakk didn't sound as if he were joking, or as if this were a prank, so Guy stopped entirely.

"If you think that's best," he said. Salakk's eyes narrowed. Guy made an adroit escape before the little alien started shouting; that was something that never ended well. If he looked hard enough, he was sure he could find a situation that needed his attention.

Guy didn't have to search long for a crisis; Sector 2814, trouble magnet that it was, radioed in a distress call specifically requesting Guy. Without waiting to hear more, he took off.

John Stewart greeted him before he made planetfall, hanging in the Earth-Moon LaGrange point 2. "Guy."

"Where's the crisis?" Guy was in no mood for pleasantries; his ring detected nothing that required his intervention, although apparently there had been a massive undersea riot spilling up onto many of Earth's beaches. If John hadn't called him for that, Guy wanted to know why he was wasting his time.

"It's Hal," John said. "He's been acting off again."

"Go pester Kyle." Not that the relationship between Hal and Kyle was common knowledge, but Guy wasn't blind. Besides, Kyle was already _on_ Earth.

"He's refusing to talk to me," John admitted. "It's odd for him, too."

"You sure that ain't just your sparkling personality?"

"This is not a joking matter," John said, and Guy stopped grinning.

"Could have another alien bug in his brain, I guess," he said. "What's your ring say?"

"Error message. I think it's related to the anomaly in 2815. Did you notice anything there?"

Something about John was setting off alarm bells, although Guy couldn't have said exactly what. He folded his arms and leaned back. "Not that comes to mind," he said. "I'm gonna have to check you too, Johnny boy."

"Fine." John hovered, without arguing, which did nothing to alleviate Guy's unease. The scan came up normal, not that Guy had expected anything else, but the vague warning sensation did not cease. "Your turn," John said.

"I don't fucking think so." Guy backed away from John, not quite dropping into a defensive crouch. "You want my help, we do this my way."

"All right." John nodded slowly. "We'll do it your way. Where do we start?"

"You don't start nowhere. I'll handle it." Something too quick to read hushed over John's face before he smoothed his expression out.

"That's very thoughtful of you, Guy," he said. "Let me know if you need help."

Guy watched him travel all the way home, just to make sure. He didn't know why Hal and Kyle might be acting oddly, but his gut told him John was the bigger problem. First one, then the other. Cracking his knuckles, Guy Gardner set to work.

**Hal – Little Hal Just Wants To Fly**

Really, there was no sense to be had out of some people. Hal clicked off the phone and replaced it in its cradle. He wasn't entirely sure why there had been a problem with the temporary removal of one of the jets – he hadn't crashed it, he hadn't damaged it, he hadn't even technically flown it. It still had a full fuel tank, even. He'd just wanted to check the design against the schematics and see how it worked on the inside. Knowing how something worked always seemed to make things tick just a little better for John, and Hal had been curious.

He'd been asked to fly at least one of several antique planes at an airshow that week, and although he had no doubt of his skill to perform, it still would have been nice to learn a little more about the insides of the machine.

He hadn't really learned anything he really wanted to know; he already had enough knowledge of the planes he flew to make them do what they were designed to and just a little bit more. But really, that was no call for outright hostility on the part of the airfield, he felt.

After the debacle a few days before with the odd planet the next sector over, Hal had felt the need to blow off a little steam. The eerie ghost planet would have unnerved most people, but Hal had found it more depressing than anything else. All that potential, wasted. He was pretty sure it was a good thing they'd managed to contain and destroy the malicious creature that had perpetrated such an act of horror, but the entire affair had left him with the feeling that his skin was too tight around his body.

A practice session against mindless beasties conjured by his ring did nothing to dispel his sense of restlessness, and as the evening wore on, Hal tried again to reach Kyle. The other man had been oddly quiet since the incident, and tonight was no exception. No matter what Hal said to convince him to do something other than hide in that little room, Kyle's increasingly short-tempered replies left Hal out in the cold.

"See how you like it if I don't talk to you," he muttered at the ring, and then paused. "Very mature," he told himself, and shook his head. If Kyle didn't want to come along, Hal was perfectly able to find fun without him.

Putting the ring in his pocket eased the tightness across his skin a little, but four bars and the same number of drinks later saw Hal no more at ease than he had been when he started. If anything, he felt wound even more tightly. The fifth bar wasn't the kind of place he usually solicited, not that he had ever made a habit of barhopping to begin with, but he approached it anyway. The neon sign above the door proclaimed the name of the establishment as "Kryptonite;" Hal wasn't sure whether he was amused or irritated in response

People had spilled out of the bar proper onto the sidewalk in front in small animated knots, pressed up against the chainlink fence blocking off the street. Hal maneuvered through the crowd into the building itself, managing to not step on any toes in the process. The bar was no more than three feet from the door, in the middle of a long and narrow room. Pinball machines dominated the space to the left while a makeshift karaoke stage and a few small tables crowded the right. Trying to get the bartender's attention was a lengthy process, but Hal eventually managed to move away from the bar proper with a beer in hand.

Halfway to the sidewalk, someone in the crowd deliberately jostled him, and Hal moved to step away from the offender. He walked right into an oncoming fist, but the crush of bodies around him prevented him from going to the ground. He balled his own fists in response and swung back, not entirely sure if his target had been the one who hit him. A rush of joy sang through him as the entire bar erupted into a brawl, and it wasn't until the city police arrived to break up the fight that he realized he'd been laughing like a maniac through the entire thing. Making his escape from the cops was child's play, and Hal slept perfectly for the first time since the incident.

The next morning saw the itching back under his skin, though, and when the first mutated sharkman crawled onto the beach, Hal almost cheered. A quick request for information told him that some kind of crisis involving Atlantis was going down, and that the fallout was essentially the equivalent of rabid dogs fleeing the ocean. More superheroes than not were on cleanup duty getting rid of them. Deciding that Kyle got no part in the fun and that John would be there already if he thought he would be needed, Hal made his way to the shoreline.

The monsters were huge by human standards, well over seven feet tall and correspondingly broad shouldered, huge ropy muscles flexing as they pulled themselves out of the water. Hal counted eleven at first glance, surprisingly quick on land.

"Clear the area!" he shouted into a constructed bullhorn. "Get inside a building, lock the doors, and stay away from the windows! Move it, people, now!"

Although Coast City had almost no steady population, a healthy number of tourists had always come to its pristine beaches, and today was no exception. The words of the local – and world famous – superhero set those people to running, the seeds of panic spreading. Hal swooped low above the water, searching for anyone who had yet to make it to shore, but there was no one left alive. The beach was the next area – most of the sunbathers and swimmers were far enough away that he thought they'd be safe, but there were always a few stragglers.

"Hey!" he shouted, diving towards the shark creature farthest from the water. "Hey!!" It paused, swiveling its upper body around to meet him, and he slammed into it. It hit the sand, rolling back towards the water, and Hal landed on his feet. "I told you to run!" he shouted again to the terrified family. They obliged, and Hal launched himself towards the next group.

The monster had its claws nearly buried in a teenage boy's shoulder; Hal grabbed its ankle and viciously yanked, swinging the beast into one of its comrades. The monster turned on its own, soaking the sand in viscous reddish orange, but Hal had already moved on. The first eleven creatures had been joined by six more, and he netted them all in a low-flying sweep. They snarled inside the construct, swiping at each other, and he left the bag hanging mid-air once he was sure he had them all.

The people in the immediate area were safe, but the rest of the coastline had no warning of danger. Picking a direction at random, Hal sped north. There were no beasts crawling out of the rocky shores nearest the city, nor at the wooded shorelines farther away. He reversed directions, heading south instead, and was just in time to drag the biggest monster he'd seen yet off a small motorboat. It twisted in his grasp, slicing down the outside of his arm, but he didn't let go. Using a construct to just smash it into oblivion suddenly seemed too impersonal; Hal dropped it on the shore, constructed a spear, and impaled it as it ran towards him.

A shadow at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and Hal moved to face it, materializing another spear as he turned. No less than seven mutated creatures had encircled him, and he realized he was smiling. They were huge and slow, compared to the speed he'd seen out of them earlier, and it was almost child's play to duck and slash. The tightness across his skin eased, and he laughed at the absolute freedom of it. The last of them fell bare seconds before his theoretical partner in policing Sector 2814, John Stewart, landed a few feet away.

"Any left?" Hal asked by way of greeting.

"No," John said, giving him a speculative look. "The rest of the outbreaks have been contained. Did you leave any of these alive?"

"Um." He had to think about it for a moment. "There was the net, unless they –" John's headshake told him that none of the creatures had survived incarceration in close quarters. "No?"

"Something going on I should know about?" John asked, and it took another moment before Hal realized that John was talking about the spear Hal still held in one hand. He let it dissolve, sticky fluids falling to the sand at his side.

"Nothing I can think of," he said, smiling. "I'll get the cleanup."

"Okay, then," John said, expression still unreadable. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks," Hal said, and watched as John left. Something about the other man made him profoundly uneasy, and he had no idea why.

The end of the cleanup operation was far too time-consuming for Hal's liking, leaving his skin too tight again, and not even the prospect of the antique airshow he'd been looking forward to for weeks was particularly exciting any more.

"Hey, Kyle." It wasn't a particularly standard greeting, but the fact that Kyle was ignoring him was more than a little irritating. Hal gave up after a few minutes, resolving to just pick Kyle up the following day; he'd promised, after all, and forgetting was no excuse.

"I'm busy," Kyle said, when Hal finally managed to make a visual connection with his ring. The windows were covered so thoroughly that not a hint of the bright afternoon sunlight peeked around the edges, which might have explained why Kyle himself looked as if he hadn't seen natural light in weeks.

"That's ridiculous," Hal told him, graciously not reminding him of his promise. "You can't possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven't called for Ion either."

"I'm busy," Kyle said again, staring at a gob of paint that resembled nothing so much as mud and poking it with a brush.

Hal's patience evaporated. "Get un-busy. I'll be there in half an hour." Kyle had to remember that they'd made this date; if he couldn't be bothered, Hal wasn't going to remind him.

The object of Kyle's apparent attention was a canvas smeared so thickly with paint that there was no clear image. Hal edged between him and it, although it wasn't easy.

"I told you," Kyle said, glaring, "I'm busy."

"You're not busy." Hal looked around the room, and something occurred to him. "You've been strange ever since we got back."

"Whatever." Kyle put down the palette, fixing an unblinking gaze on Hal. "Where are we going?"

There was a clean pair of pants in the room, although Hal had to dig through a two-foot high pile to find it. He tossed it at Kyle. "Get clean and get dressed. It's a surprise." Maybe Kyle would remember once they actually got there.

"Was the airshow today?"

"Yes. Yes, it is." Hal did not grind his teeth at Kyle's question; the other man could be flaky at the best of times, and now was clearly not one of those times. They'd all been under a lot of stress recently, and this was perfectly excusable. Kyle's distinct lack of enthusiasm didn't make Hal's rationalization any easier. "Get in the plane."

"What plane?"

"Not funny." Hal slid the ring off his finger and placed it in the bag he'd be leaving on the ground.

"I mean it. There are no actual planes here. I'm not getting in one of those things."

"So do I. Get in the plane, Kyle." If worst came to worst, Ion was part of Kyle and he could use the energy to get them out of pretty much anything. It took a little of the edge away, but it was worth it to have Kyle flying with him.

"You're kidding."

"You're embarrassing me," Hal muttered. "Get in the goddamn plane."

"This is ridiculous," Kyle hissed, but he climbed into the copilot's seat Hal had indicated.

Waving to the assembled crowd – not a huge number, but enough to appreciate the antiques – Hal followed him in, strapped on the safety belts, and ran through the pre-flight checklist. Every figurative light ran green, and he gave a thumbs-up to the viewers before getting the plane off the ground.

The pre-approved solo flight plan he'd filed had been designed with safety in mind – both his copilot's and the people on the ground. Hal discarded the plan before they'd gotten off the ground, and pushed the plane to its limits. He knew exactly how much the aging structure could take, and how to turn those stresses into the best show possible. It would have been brilliant, if Kyle hadn't started shouting at him to cut it out before he'd done a third of what he thought the plane could take.

"Put this thing on the ground! Now!"

For the second time that day, Hal reached the end of his rope. Kyle couldn't possibly be afraid for his life – he was not only a Green Lantern, he was Ion, and besides, Hal was piloting the plane. There was no reason for him to complain. Hal smirked. If Kyle wanted the plane on the ground, Hal would put the plane on the ground as fast as possible.

"Sure thing," he said over his shoulder, and cut the engines.

"Land it! Land it!" Kyle yelled, kicking the back of his seat. "Not crash! Land!"

_Well, if you're going to be picky about it,_ Hal mouthed. "You're so demanding," he said out loud. Getting the plane to land properly was one of the most difficult maneuvers he'd ever performed, but the plane landed with a modicum of grace and came to a halt precisely at the end of the runway. Kyle was out of the plane the second it stopped moving. Hal followed him again.

"Where are you going?" Kyle was still stalking away, so Hal grabbed his wrist.

"I don't have time for this!" Without even breaking stride, Kyle pulled himself out of Hal's grasp and kept moving. "If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!"

Between one beat of his heart and the next, everything that was wrong about the relationship Hal had been trying to maintain crystallized. If Kyle wasn't willing to work for it too, then it wasn't worth the trouble. "You're right," he said. "I won't bother you again."

Kyle actually turned around at that, a look on his face as though he'd been physically hit. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You figure it out," Hal said. He spun on his heel and left, almost hoping Kyle would come after him. He didn't, but Hal wasn't about to go back. He grabbed his bag and his ring and left the show without another word.

He didn't make it to his apartment; bare seconds before he reached his door, a report came through his ring.

"Hal Jordan of Earth."

The Guardians so rarely intervened now; in his surprise, Hal nearly tripped over his own feet. "Yes?" he said.

"An uncharted black hole has taken shape in Sector 2814 and a passing convoy has been trapped at the event horizon."

"I'm on it." Hal cut communication and leapt for space.

TBC


	5. Parasite

"An uncharted black hole?" John Stewart, Green Lantern of Sector 2814, partner to one Hal Jordan, stared at the image in front of him in consternation. Not that long ago, a strange planet had appeared in the adjacent sector, prompting investigation. As the Lanterns responsible for the sector had turned up missing, the matter had fallen to Hal. His backup had come in the form of Honor Guard Lantern Guy Gardner and Corps mascot Kyle Rayner, also known as Ion. The planet had vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, which had in theory been the end of the matter, but John had noticed changes in Hal's behavior afterwards. Kyle, who was free to choose a sector or not as he pleased and stayed on Earth due to his relationship with Hal, hadn't been acting normal either. John had asked for Guy's assistance; as a member of the Honor Guard, troubleshooting was his job. Guy had been just as off as Hal and Kyle, though, which put John right back at square one, and now yet another anomaly had appeared out of nowhere. "Here?"

"It is your duty, John Stewart." He couldn't tell which Guardian it was, staring down at him out of the sky. They'd done that all the time when he'd first gotten the ring, when he'd first acted as Hal's backup, but he hadn't seen it in ages. He was almost tempted to think it was some sort of trick.

"I have the coordinates," he said instead. There weren't many people who could pull off a convincing image of a Guardian, and none of them could mimic the energy that went through the Central Battery.

"Hurry," said the Guardian, and vanished.

As John flew towards the black hole, it occurred to him that another Lantern might possibly be able to pull off faking a Guardian, and that meant a detour back to Earth and the Watchtower. The medbay had a number of neural inhibitors specifically calibrated for human brains; in theory, they were to be used on non-meta human supervillains with a psychic connection to whatever gear they used. That Batman had developed something that could so easily be turned on his own teammates – specifically, on Hal Jordan, just in case he went crazy again, and John had _asked_ - had given him chills at the time, but now he was grateful for Batman's foresight. Given how weird Guy had acted, John couldn't help but connect dots. There was a fine line between insight and jumping to conclusions, though, and in theory he was skilled at walking it. In practice, that just meant that he prepared for the worst and was rarely caught off-guard.

To his surprise, Hal joined him before he'd cleared the atmosphere. "You too?" he asked, looking and sounding perfectly normal.

"The Guardians," John said by way of reply. "They haven't done that in ages."

"Tell me about it." They flew in silence for a while, the stars barely changing. The black hole was on the edge of Sector 2814, almost inside 2815. John had never been in that particular corner of the sector, isolated as it was. There were no inhabited star systems, no trading posts, no planets at all. The only object John knew of was a single red dwarf star, and it wouldn't have been noteworthy except for its being so very isolated.

That star was gone now, a static black hole in its place. It made no astronomical or mathematical sense; red dwarf stars were generally too stable to collapse into black holes without some kind of outside impetus. "Do you see the convoy?" he asked Hal.

"There." Hal pointed, and John could see a single ship, redshifted into near-invisibility. The rest of the convoy had retreated to a safe distance, and as John watched, the black hole suddenly shrank and disappeared, collapsing into brilliant light. The ship caught in its event horizon wavered and vanished, along with its companions. "An illusion?" Hal asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

"What the hell was that?" Not only should the red dwarf not have collapsed into a black hole in the first place, it had far too much mass to evaporate in the unlikely event that it did form a gravitational singularity.

"I'll tell you what that was," came a new voice. John half-turned to see Guy and got a fist in his face.

Briefly stunned by the impact, John couldn't react. By the time he managed to regain his equilibrium, Hal and Guy were tearing at each other. Both of them seemed to have forgotten their rings in favor of a completely physical fight. Ignoring that the two of them should have been working together if they were both possessed by some kind of invading alien, John took the opportunity to scan them both. As expected, his ring gave back an error message, and he compensated for it.

"Error," said the ring again, and still neither of them paid the slightest attention to him. John recalibrated and tried again, and finally managed to confirm the presence of an alien parasite. He'd concentrated on Guy – of the two of them, Guy was the more dangerous – but Hal showed signs of the same possession when John turned the recalibrated scan on him as well.

Protocol demanded that in the case of a Lantern becoming compromised, assistance be called. John was halfway to it when it occurred to him that if this had nothing to do with the anomaly, anyone at all could be infected. Anyone on Earth, in the Corps… he had no idea where it had come from.

A resounding crash, transmitted through the ring, brought his attention back to the fight. Hal had gone limp, floating in space, and Guy had his fist drawn back to deliver a killing blow.

"Stop!" John grabbed his wrist. "You were right. He's infected."

Guy gave him a suspicious look. "How can you tell?"

John sent the specifications of the scan – minus the results – into Guy's ring, and let the other man confirm his readings. "See it there? It's just barely phase-shifted into this dimension, and it's wrapped around his brain, reaching into the amygdala."

"Did you scan me?" Guy asked after a moment.

"You're fine," John told him. The ring would detect a lie, but at that precise moment he firmly believed that Guy was in fact fine and would not cause any trouble. That didn't mean that he wasn't carrying an alien parasite, and it was a fine distinction between truth and lie, but it was apparently enough to fool the ring, because Guy nodded and wrapped Hal into an impenetrable cocoon.

"Can I have him?" John asked. The neural inhibitors were behind his belt, hidden in the small of his back, and he was fairly sure neither Hal nor Guy had noticed them. The belt itself wasn't particularly visible; John just felt better having its solidity around his waist. He'd never thought the small band of stiffer material generated into his costume would have a practical use.

"Best to take him back to Oa." Guy wasn't wrong, but he couldn't be allowed to follow protocol.

"What if whatever this was originated on Oa?" John asked, trying to think quickly enough to stay a step ahead. "Better if we can get rid of it now."

"Right, right." Guy nodded. "We'll take him to Phobos. No Martians there. No Justice League. He'll be safe enough."

"Exactly." John started towards the solar system, letting his ring set a course for Mars and its moons. A sudden sharp blow to the back of his head sent him spiraling downwards, and he cursed himself for letting Guy fool him in the split second before thought fuzzed into nothing.

Matters had not improved when John woke, not that he expected them to. Guy had indeed taken him to the Martian moon of Phobos – it was, essentially, a giant floating rock. John could see to both horizons, and they weren't that far away. He supposed he was lucky to have woken up at all, but the construct Guy had left over the moon's surface both held in enough air to breathe and made it all but impossible for him to leave, unless he managed to will his ring through the barrier.

The ring itself was just on the other side of the glowing green wall. "Guy, you asshole," John muttered. Leaving it that close and yet inaccessible was nothing more than a childish gesture of superiority, and Guy should have outgrown those years ago. On the other hand, Guy's reawakened need for acknowledgement meant that John was alive so he could presumably give it, and not floating in space on the edge of the sector. John gave brief thanks to whatever was listening that the parasite had made the mistake of leaving him alive and well, and set to work getting his ring through the force shield.

Leaving the ring in such close proximity might have been the parasite's second mistake, but the location of the ring was more or less irrelevant. It could be called, as long as it had not been destroyed, and given enough time, the barrier could be worn down.

To John's knowledge, no reports of odd behavior – other than the one John himself had made to the Guardians prior to requesting Guy's help – had been filed. The problem, such as it was, appeared to be confined to Sector 2814, more specifically Earth, and most specifically to the Lanterns investigating the anomalous planet that had appeared out of nowhere and that Hal had for some reason felt the need to smash into dust. Despite his earlier fears that the entire planet or the entire Corps (and it was a tossup as to which was worse, as far as he was concerned) could be infected, John was fairly confident in assuming that the problem was limited to the other three Earth-born Lanterns.

The barrier weakened just enough for him to lay the barest sliver of skin against the curve of the ring, and it slid through with a pop, settling onto his finger. The barrier snapped back into place, shuddering visibly, and John started trying to drill through it. The breach must have set off some kind of mental alarm, though, because within seconds, a pinpoint of green light flared up among the stars. It grew rapidly, finally resolving itself into three figures. Before John had time to do more than blink, Guy hovered outside, flanked by Hal on one side and Kyle on the other. Where their eyes behind the masks should have been a blank white was glowing dark green instead, energy leaking out. The energy barrier around Phobos vanished, but the three men in front of him were an effective deterrent in their own right.

"Hello, Guy." No time to call for backup, either from the League or from the Corps; in any case, were he to call in from the Corps, Guy and Kyle _were_ the backup and there was no one in the League who could go toe to toe with one Lantern without sustaining serious damage, let alone three. At least, there was no one who wasn't urgently needed elsewhere at any given moment, or anyone fast enough to get there on time anyway.

"I knew there was something wrong," Guy said. "Something wasn't quite right about you. You called in a priority mission to investigate odd behavior, but that isn't exactly a priority. No, John, you're playing a deeper game. You were trying to get the rest of us out of the way."

Altering Guy's speech patterns meant that the alien had its tendrils deeper in the other man's brain than John had thought; getting it back out was going to require a lot of work. It did not occur to him that he might lose the fight, or that any of the men facing him might escape.

"You're the one who's been affected, Guy." Not that he expected anything resembling rationality out of any of them, but it gained him at least a few seconds. Behind Guy, Kyle started glowing – a massive energy buildup if John had ever seen one.

"We're going to help you, John," Hal said, floating closer. John slid backwards, not putting the moon between himself and the others, but moving away from both Mars and the Earth's orbit. The asteroid belt was behind him, not that it did much good. There wasn't enough density for him to use it as a place to hide, but the nearest meters-wide body made a perfectly good distraction when flung directly at Kyle. By the time the dust cleared, John was halfway to the rings of Saturn.

Kyle caught up with him first, but John was already deep within the rings. The ice crystals reflected green, warning him of Kyle's arrival and the subsequent blast of energy. Water melted and refroze, leaving a clear path in its wake. A distant corner of John's mind noted that this would probably give Earth-bound astronomers fits, but the rest of it was too busy dodging Kyle's wild shots. He pulled another moonlet out of its orbit and sent it towards Kyle as well, not sticking around to see the effects.

The nearest actual moon was an ovoid shape, a huge crater on one side reminiscent of the Death Star. John used its mass to slingshot himself directly at the planet, plunging into the bluish upper hemisphere and cutting all but the bare minimum of his ring's energy output. At this altitude, Saturn's atmosphere was a dense cloud of frozen crystal, the thick fog leaving no trace of his passing. John drifted, waiting, but it didn't take long for green light to become visible through the mist. Kyle floated past, eyes shining brightly as he swung his head slowly back and forth. John held his breath, although he knew it would have no effect on anything whatsoever, and when Kyle's back was turned, he struck.

A split second was all that John had, and he used that second to gather a club of frozen and compressed ammonia, applied with excessive force to the back of Kyle's skull. The light went out, and John caught his friend. He hadn't thought to check whether or not any of them had removed the neural inhibitors, but they were still in place behind his belt. John fixed the first to Kyle's temple, watching him closely in case the alien parasite took the opportunity to rear its ugly head, but his friend remained limp. John carried him to the nearest moon – the one he'd used as a slingshot – and left him on the floor of the crater, at the bottom of its central peak. A bubble of energy would keep Kyle alive until he could come back for him, and the icy moon would keep him hidden.

Hal flew into view just before John cleared the walls of the crater. He too was moving slowly, obviously searching – it wouldn't take more than a few seconds for his ring to register John's energy output and zero in on his position. John removed the second neural inhibitor and let go of it, a sniper's rifle coalescing around the small disc. He ringed the scope and aimed as Hal swung around and started toward him.

There was no sound, no explosion of powder, but the inhibitor streaked forward in its bullet-shaped casing. The construct casing dissolved on impact, the inhibitor sticking to Hal and doing what it was supposed to do. Hal tumbled towards the moon, caught in its gravity, and John intercepted his fall. "I hope you were in there and helping me out, buddy," he murmured. Hal should have been able to stop that bullet, but if he'd stayed the parasite's hand, perhaps there was hope that it could be safely removed after all.

In theory, Hal's ring would keep him alive without an energy bubble, but John laid him beside Kyle anyway. "Wish me luck," he said softly, and then wished he weren't talking to himself. Whether or not he stayed in the vicinity of the elliptical moon, Guy would be able to track his energy signature, but John wasn't going to make it easy for him to find the other two.

Saturn's largest moon shone a bright orange, and John flared his ring's energy as he approached it. As expected, Guy appeared bare seconds later. John dove into Titan's atmosphere, letting the ring compensate for the higher pressure. The farther down he went, the darker it got, clouds thickening into mist. Rain fell in sheets, and he ringed a set of goggles to both keep the liquid away from his eyes and display the terrain. A river cutting through sandy ground and fed by the driving rain ran past a small plateau and he landed near it. Guy's bright green glow was visible in every spectrum as he dove into the lake and emerged, heavy liquid dripping into the thick air.

"Stewart!" he shouted. John was ready, third neural inhibitor in a construct bullet and rifle materializing around it.

"Wish me luck," he said again and fired. Guy batted the bullet aside like a toy, and the inhibitor hit the liquid methane. It froze, shattered, and sank in a matter of seconds. "Dammit." That single word was all he had time for; Guy was swinging at him with a huge glowing fist, and John threw himself to the side. The river carried him toward the lake, and he rose out of it, using his momentum to plant his feet against the plateau and push off. He caught Guy at the waist, both of them hitting the ground with a deafening crash. The soil rippled like water, and Guy just grinned, kicking John towards the sky with both feet. John fended off the construct he knew was behind him with a long pole, the other end pinning Guy down, but Guy sliced through it and flipped lightly upwards.

"No luck for you," he said, and a bolt of pure energy sparked towards John. The rain broke the light into thousands of sparkling rainbows in every shade of green, and John shielded his eyes. He slid sideways at the last possible moment, and the bolt struck the plateau and arced through it, leaving a smoking hole. The plateau crumbled, falling into the river, and John grabbed the largest chunks and threw them at Guy. The dust clouded his vision for a moment and when it cleared, Guy was gone.

"Above you," he heard and threw himself to the side again. He sent a hail of arrows flying upwards, hearing at least some of them sizzle as they struck, but there was no sound from Guy. John took off, moving sideways as he rose, searching. Guy came out of what seemed like nowhere and reached for his neck, but while his hands were occupied he couldn't fight. With one hand trying to pry Guy's fingers loose, John struggled to ignore the pressure and the rising tide of blackness as he pulled the fourth and final inhibitor from behind his belt with the other. It clicked as it latched into place against Guy's temple, the other man seeing it too late. Anger twisted his face in the split second before he sagged against John and the pressure on John's throat vanished.

"Sorry, man." He rubbed his throat, the ring already starting to repair the damage, and pulled Guy out of the freezing atmosphere. "Let's go home."

The Watchtower had never been as welcome a sight; John radioed ahead as it came into view, floating in space with the Earth behind it. Explanations came after isolation; J'onn verified that John was not, in fact, suffering possession, insanity, or any other mind-altering condition and John's ring verified in turn that J'onn was uncompromised by Hal's alien parasite. None of the League present in the Watchtower showed signs of infection, but once John uploaded the analysis parameters into the Watchtower computers, they confirmed the presence of the parasite in Hal, Kyle, and Guy.

"Do you know how to get rid of it?" John asked. His report had been belatedly sent to the Guardians only when he received a message inquiring as to why he hadn't either updated the status of his situation or returned Guy for duties elsewhere, but it had been met with silence.

"I am not entirely sure," J'onn said. The three Lanterns remained in isolation, although given the parasite's extradimensional properties, John wasn't sure that the isolation would do any good.

"You cannot," came a series of very familiar voices, and John resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. The Guardians were inside the isolation chamber, all but one in a ring around the prone forms of the infected Lanterns. The remaining Guardian hovered in front of John, politely including J'onn in its address; he thought it might be Ganthet, but it was nearly impossible to tell them apart.

"Do you know what it is?" he asked, ignoring for the moment the fact that the Guardians had actually left Oa and traveled all the way to Earth.

"You have been fortunate indeed, John Stewart." He was almost sure it was Ganthet, now. "Fortunate that the being was disoriented from its long exile and that the chaotic mind of humanity was no easy barrier to overcome."

"What long exile?" John asked.

"The great civilization of Alethos was humbled when we were first made aware of this being," Ganthet said. "It was sealed away, it and the planet it had infested."

"You mean that thing that's inside Hal is what was on that planet he went to investigate?" John swallowed his next words; if the Guardians had known what it was, why had they sent an investigative team? And if they hadn't known to begin with, surely they'd had enough information after hearing the reports to put it together. Shouting at the Guardians did no good to anyone, though, and was a quick way to disciplinary action for anyone except Kyle.

"There is no danger now, John Stewart." Ganthet had been joined by the other Guardians, and they faded simultaneously.

"What the fuck," John muttered. There was no sign of the parasite, when he checked, but he doubted that the Guardians would tell him or anyone else what it had been or what they'd done with it. In fact, they would probably deny that it had existed at all. He had no doubt that there would be a lot of explaining to be done when his teammates woke, and yet again he was going to be the one doing it. "Thanks a lot."

At least they'd all survived this time; as Hal said, any landing you could walk away from was a good one. John turned to face the isolation ward and took a deep breath. "Here we go."

_Epilogue:_  
"So if the Guardians sealed the planet away to keep this psychic leech thing from spreading, how did it get out?" Kyle sat with one heel planted on his chair, arms wrapped around his knee, and looked down at Hal. He'd been the first to wake, and despite John's attempts to convince him to wait for the others before explaining the past few days, he'd insisted that his questions be answered _right now_.

"I don't know." John had very little information to go on, and the Guardians weren't much for giving any kind of answers or explanations.

"But it was trying to expand, again," Kyle pressed.

"The Guardians didn't say, but probably, yes." He felt fairly sure it was a reasonable assumption.

"So why didn't it get any farther than us?" Kyle continued.

"Earthlings are chaotic and disorganized," John said blandly. Kyle shot him a hard look at that, as if he thought John might be joking. John raised his hands in defense. "It's gone," he said. "There's nothing to worry about now."

"What else is waiting out there?" Kyle asked softly, reaching down to cover Hal's hand with his. "What else is there that I can't protect him from?"

"It wasn't your fault," John said, but Kyle didn't seem to hear. He retreated, giving the other man what privacy he could, but the question Kyle had asked echoed in his mind. _What else?_ He shook his head. There would always be something else, and they would always go to meet it. Always.

FINIS ...?


	6. Warrior's Is Not A Dance Club

According to the law of averages, there had to be something at which Hal was piss-poor incompetent. Guy just wished that something wasn't dancing, or if it had to be, that Hal wouldn't demonstrate it by flopping around like an incontinent fish out of water right in the middle of his bar. Guy wasn't even sure what, exactly, Hal was doing; he assumed it was meant to be dancing only because Hal was standing in the middle of the makeshift dance floor and twitching his shoulders around, feet apparently only vaguely connected to his upper half.

"Not again," came a very quiet groan from much closer to the bar. Guy had to peer through the crowd of green to catch sight of his current business partner, otherwise known as Hal Jordan's girlfriend. He smirked, wandered down the bar, and leaned over.

"How's my favorite mascot?"

Kyle glared at him, effect diminished by his hands firmly planted over his face. If he thought that would stop anyone from recognizing him, he was completely and absolutely wrong. "I am not a mascot."

"Right. Sorry. Battery."

"I am not a battery!" Kyle snapped, loudly enough that several of the off-duty Lanterns who _had_been vaguely watching Hal's parody of dancing turned to look at him instead.

Guy hid a chuckle, his own bad mood diffused by Kyle's obvious embarrassment. "On the house," he said, sliding a beer towards the other man as Hal continued his gyrations.

"I am the house," Kyle muttered, but he did it quietly enough that Guy could pretend he hadn't heard. He stared at it instead of drinking it, though, pointedly ignoring the dance floor. After a few moments, Guy reclaimed the beer.

"It works better if you drink it," he said, and slid a full shot glass across the bar instead.

"I don't think alcohol is the answer to Hal's creepy dancing," Kyle answered, but he drained the glass with a grimace, sneaking another look over at Hal. Hal just beamed, apparently taking Kyle's look of dismay as encouragement, because he just danced harder.

"Sure it is." Guy refilled the glass and Kyle all but snatched it out of his hand, staring at Hal with the same mix of fascination and horror a civilian might accord a train wreck.

"You're absolutely right," he said, and pushed the empty glass back towards Guy. "Absolutely right."

At some point after Guy had lost count of the number of times he'd replenished the glass and after the nightly crowd had mostly made its way indoors, Kyle finally wandered away from the bar and towards Hal. It was entirely possible that Guy wouldn't have enabled his buddy if he'd known exactly what Kyle was planning on doing, but then again, that bit of him that reveled in schadenfreude was awake and alive tonight, and he might just have enjoyed the anticipation.

"Stop. Moving."

Hal froze with a look of almost comical surprise as Kyle laid a hand on his shoulder, face deadly serious. The surprise didn't so much fade as slide into stark disbelief as Kyle demonstrated a heretofore unseen skill at poledancing, with Hal as a substitute for the pole. The first thirty seconds of the dance were performed in a swiftly growing bubble of silence as more and more of the patrons turned to stare at the Torchbearer. Silence was followed by various equivalents of whistles of encouragement, laughter, and calls to stop. None of it had any effect on Kyle whatsoever, as he focused purely on Hal.

As the dancing continued, smoothly and with no sign of stopping, the crowd eventually stopped paying attention. Guy continued working the bar, keeping one eye on the dance floor in case of further idiocy, and fielding questions of "What, exactly, are they doing?" in its many variations with some form of "Piss off, I'm busy" or "Go ask them." His bad mood from earlier in the evening was creeping back, though, and he finally lost any semblance of patience.

"It's an Earth training routine," he growled at the very startled rookie, into what was a purely coincidental lapse of conversation around the room in general. "Balance and stamina." That, of course, was Kyle's cue to trip over the floor and go down hard, somehow managing to take Hal with him.

"Balance," repeated the rookie, quailing in the face of the Gardner Glare and beating a hasty retreat. Guy would have left it at that, too, except for the lack of resolution in the crowd swirling around the dance floor. He vaulted over the bar in irritation to see what the kid had managed to do _now_. Once again, the embarrassment of his teammate washed away enough of his irritation to let him chuckle.

"No." The only word that came to mind to describe Kyle's face and voice as he remained stubbornly prone was 'sulky.'

"You can't just stay there." Hal, on the other hand, was firmly held in place on top of Kyle by careful application of force and leverage to appropriately delicate areas, and was thoroughly discomfited.

"Watch me." Kyle's left hand tightened and Hal twitched.

"Then let _me_go." There was no planet in the universe on which Hal's squirming wouldn't look dirty, Oa included, and Hal must have realized it, for he blushed redder and stopped trying to extricate himself.

"No." Kyle stared at the ceiling, and Hal flopped his head down to bury his face in Kyle's chest.

"Not out here, you don't," Guy said, momentary amusement once again giving way to irritation, and he scooped both of them up in an opaque construct bubble. The loss of the possible spectacle had very little effect on the crowd in the bar, most of whom had long ago lost interest in the anomalies from Sector 2814.

"We're going, we're going." With enough of a distraction, Hal had managed to wriggle free. In the midst of a whispered argument, he dragged Kyle back across the bar and out the front door. Given the way his hands were all over Kyle, Guy didn't think the argument was going to last long.

_Whatever,_ he groused silently. _Long as it stays outta my bar, they can do what they want._

He'd nearly forgotten the incident until the next morning's first pot of coffee managed to produce Hal out of thin air, suspiciously and abominably cheerful for the early hour. Guy chose to regard his presence as a harbinger of doom; any day starting out with Hal in a good mood couldn't possibly bode well for anyone else.

"Of course I can dance," Hal said, stealing Guy's mug. He did it with just enough of an air of appropriation that Guy took it back and pointed silently at the row of clean empty mugs just waiting to be used.

"No dancing at the bar," Guy told him. "Regulation twenty-seven, subsection c, paragraph eight."

"I notice you're not complaining about Kyle," Hal said, fishing a mug out of the cupboard and splashing coffee into it.

"Paragraph nine," Guy said, and smirked. "He's the exception. After all, someone's got to demonstrate Earth training techniques."

Hal choked. "Training?"

"Balance and stamina." The look on Hal's face was to be treasured. Guy smirked, slowly enough to give his words a ring of authenticity. "Part of the new curriculum."

Coffee forgotten, Hal stalked off to confront someone about the supposed training program, and Guy let the smirk widen. This might not turn out to be such a bad day after all.

TBC


	7. No Pink Elephants

"No." There was no good reason for Guy Gardner to be standing on Hal Jordan's balcony, arms crossed and face rearranged into what could only be categorized as a smug smirk, and Hal had already had a bad enough day without having to worry about being polite to the personification of obnoxious.

"You don't even know what I was gonna say," Guy protested, jumping off the balcony railing and landing lightly on the wooden deck.

"I don't have to. I remember the last time you tried to liven up the New Year's celebration." Hal stood in the doorway, feeling the heat flow out around him. All he'd heard was the phrase 'New Year' and he already knew he wanted nothing to do with whatever Guy wanted.

"Are you still gonna hold that against me?" Guy asked, edging towards the door.

"Damn right." Hal stood his ground, but Guy was both pushy and had no concept of personal space, and between that and the fact that _Hal_ actually had a job and bills to pay meant that he didn't feel like trying to heat the entirety of California. He stood aside and let Guy into the living room.

"And I suppose this year you're gonna be patrolling. Again," Guy said, sliding the door closed. He ringed the snow off his boots, too, apparently in an effort to be polite. It wasn't going to change Hal's mind.

"As a matter of fact, no. The Justice League duty roster for New Year's Eve is not me, and I have faith that matters will be properly taken care of." Besides, Hal had plans already, and they involved Kyle.

"Then what are you doing? Chasing Carol Ferris? Again?" Guy leered, flopping down on the sofa.

"No." Hal sat down on the armchair, keeping his back straight and his posture just short of rigid; throwing punches at Guy was never a solution. Guy knew very well that he was no longer involved with Carol, and if Hal didn't know better, he'd think Guy was trying to throw Carol at him because he wanted Kyle all to himself. _Jealousy is not a pretty thing,_ he reminded himself.

"It was a _joke_, Jordan. You know what that is, right?" The grin was as insufferable as ever, and Hal consciously relaxed his hands.

"What do you _want_, Guy?"

"So there's this screwy shit going down, weird sounds, maybe another color ring floating around –" Guy jumped up and started pacing, gesturing aimlessly.

"The point, Guy." Courtesy or not, he wasn't in the mood to listen to Guy's babbling.

"The point is that everyone's wound tighter'n a nun's pussy," Guy said, which really wasn't helping clarify matters and was an inappropriate mental image besides. Hal's temper snapped, or it would have, if he'd let it.

"Okay, that's it. Conversation over." Control of his temper or not, he was finished talking. Whatever it was Guy wanted, he'd have to go harass someone else for it.

"Grow up, Jordan," Guy said absently, and started to reiterate his inane point.

"Gro- you're telling _me_-" Hal took a deep breath, and stood. "I don't even _care_ what you want. Out."

"No, no, see," Guy said, and Hal stalked over to the balcony door. He had it unlocked and was on the point of opening it, but the front door opened instead.

"Hi, honey, I'm ho—oh, hey, Guy. What's going on?" Kyle's warm smile faltered as he took in the atmosphere. "No, seriously, what's going on? Do you guys need backup?" Green light flared as his costume materialized and the energy of Ion sparked around his hands.

"Put your clothes back on, Kyle." Hal re-locked the balcony door.

"Not a disaster?" Kyle asked, somewhat sheepishly, re-manifesting his normal clothing. He was wearing boots and a fuzzy jacket, Hal was amused to note. Kyle invariably overdressed for the weather; rare as snow was around here, it still didn't call for five layers.

"No," Hal said, returning his train of thought to the original track. "Not unless you count the mess Guy is going to make bleeding all over the floor unless he decides to come to the point for once in his life and explain what the hell he wants."

"New Year's on Oa," Guy said helpfully. Of course he could be concise and informative when Kyle was listening. Sometimes Hal thought Guy acted obnoxiously just to piss him off, and the rest of the time he was absolutely sure of it.

"That actually—it's not New Year's Eve." Kyle frowned. "Wait, did I lose track of time again?"

"It's not tonight, Kyle," Hal said gently. _Awfully pretty and not too bright_, supplied a corner of his mind. He told it to shut up.

"Oh. Right." Kyle unwound the scarf from around his neck and started neatly piling his outerwear in the closet. "On Oa?"

"So what do you say?" Guy was all but bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"I can think of a million reasons to stay far, far away, and most of them are you," Hal said. He didn't think he'd been loud enough to be heard, but Guy glared and Kyle tossed of an apologetic smile before dragging him into the kitchen.

"Cut it out, Hal. There's no reason to be rude." Kyle was making no effort to be quiet, at all, which was sort of counterproductive. Hal was sure Guy could hear them from the other side of the open door.

"You don't—" he started anyway.

"Don't tell me I don't know Guy like you do. Be nice." Kyle was occasionally perceptive, or maybe he just knew Hal well enough to counter his usual complaints about Guy. It didn't make them any less true. Kyle wasn't the one who'd been stalked for years.

"I don't—" Hal started, trying to set the record straight.

"Just do it." That was Kyle's stern face, the one he tried every time he wanted Hal to do something and wasn't willing to budge. Hal didn't have the heart to tell him that it was cute more than anything else. He sighed and capitulated.

"You owe me," he said.

"That's fine." Harmony apparently restored, Kyle was all smiles. He moved aside, following Hal back into the living room.

"All right, Guy, we're in." Hal paused. "Someone has to make sure you don't crack the planet in half," he added. It was a legitimate concern, after all.

"Thanks a lot, Hal." There was no trace of sarcasm in Guy's face or voice, but Hal shot him a hard look anyway. "Kyle?"

"Yeah, yeah." Kyle had apparently lost interest in the conversation altogether and was sealing the cracks around the balcony door with a construct. "What?" he said defensively as they both stared at him. "It's cold."

Guy shook his head. "Don't suppose you want to give me a hand putting it together," he offered. "Take your mind off- uh, I could always use some help."

"Sure." Hal squeezed Kyle's shoulder. Kyle had a lot going on in both his personal life, and with the Corps. Maybe this thing Guy was planning really would be the best for everyone; it would be a welcome breather.

"Great. I'll see you tomorrow." Guy left through the front door, letting a blast of freezing air into the apartment again.

"I can't believe you said yes," Hal said, more for the sake of form than any real objections.

"It'll be fun." Kyle grinned, the first real smile Hal had seen in days.

"You weren't here the last time he decided that Corps needed to have a little more fun on New Year's Eve," Hal said, suddenly remembering why he'd told Guy no to begin with. How the hell had he forgotten Guy's last shenanigans? "There were pink elephants."

"Pink elephants," Kyle said, voice clearly conveying his skepticism.

"It's a long story," Hal hedged. He wasn't sure he wanted to tell it, either; Guy had gotten them _all_ completely smashed, he'd hooked up with Arisia, John had gotten engaged, 'Wog and Ch'p had both turned out to be whiny drunks, and Salakk had created an army of pink elephants while in a drunken stupor. It had not been a pretty sight.

"I have all night," Kyle pointed out, wrapping his arms around Hal from behind.

"Salakk would not b—you know what, we have plenty of time." Hal smirked. Then again, this was a story that deserved to be told. "This was back before Guy joined the Justice League…"

TBC


	8. Snowfall

"I can melt the snow from under the car," Kyle said through the open window. Snow was still falling, although not as rapidly as before, and the blowing wind had swept a lot of the snow right off the road. It was their poor luck to have driven straight into one of the snowbanks still on it.

Hal was standing behind the car, pushing as Kyle pressed down on the gas. The wheels spun, spraying snow in a lovely white arc, but it didn't budge. Hal shook his head and stood up.

"We agreed, no powers. Just us. Four days." Hal had wanted to leave his ring behind, but Kyle had pointed out that Ion was part of him, and that the power would come with them whether Hal left his ring in a locker or no. Besides, having it in case of an emergency was the smart thing to do.

"That was before the worst blizzard on record came to say hello." The worst blizzard on record didn't mean much, when one considered where the Grand Canyon was. They'd barely gotten on the road from the airport in Phoenix – Hal had even insisted they fly commercially, to be perfectly normal, and Kyle had agreed for the sake of harmony – when the sky had darkened. After an hour, white flakes had started falling, and now that they were almost there, the car had skidded nearly off the road. "You know, Hal, we're lucky this thing didn't go off the other side."

The guard rail supposedly keeping vehicles from going down a lovely high cliff looked as if it had already been on the receiving end of a few automobile mishaps; Kyle wouldn't have trusted it to hold the weight of a small dog, much less an entire vehicle.

"Yeah, yeah." Hal dug around in the trunk, coming out with a crowbar and a pleased expression.

"What are you going to do with that?" He'd never owned a car, and certainly never in a snowy climate, but he couldn't fathom what Hal might want with a crowbar. There was nothing but snow to lever the car _against_.

"No shovel," Hal said, and started scooping snow away from the front of the car.

What Kyle wanted to say was, _You can't possibly be serious_ and _It's fucking cold out here, Hal, let's just melt the damn snow and drive to the hotel_ or possibly _Why don't we just fly home_, but something about doing this trip like a perfectly normal couple had been important. He couldn't explain it, and he didn't understand it, but if Hal wanted it he was willing to do what he could. After all, it wasn't like they were about to freeze to death.

"Let me have your gloves." Hal had brought sensible warm gloves, and if he was going to be digging the damn car out with his hands, he was going to try to avoid frostbite while he did it.

Hal grinned at him, once he realized what Kyle was doing. Between digging out the wheels and scattering sand in front of them – "For traction," Hal explained, and _that_ was why he'd insisted on bringing it – the car lurched forward. It nearly skidded up to the guard rail, but a gentle correction put it back on the road pointing forward.

"Have you been here before?" Hal asked, once they'd reached the park proper and were nearly to their hotel.

"I've flown over it," Kyle said. He hadn't actually been as a tourist, he realized. "But I never stopped to look."

"It's…" Hal started, and trailed off. The hotel parking lot was covered in white, and when Hal parked the car, Kyle thought it was a fifty-fifty chance as to whether or not there was an actual parking space under the wheels.

"It's what?" he prompted.

"You have to stop and look," Hal said softly. "To remember why we do what we do."

More than anyone, Kyle understood that feeling; it was too easy to forget why he had worn the ring and why he carried Ion now. "I know," he said, but Hal didn't answer; he didn't even look as if he'd heard Kyle. Kyle shrugged and got out of the car. Hal didn't follow; he just sat in the driver's seat, an uncharacteristically melancholy expression blanketing his features. Kyle waited for a moment with the door open, but Hal just stared at the swirling snow.

"Hey," Kyle said, and when Hal finally looked at him, Kyle threw a snowball. He missed, splattering it on the window. "Oops."

"Hey!" Hal scrambled out of the car after that, scooping up his own snowball. His aim was perfect, and Kyle ducked behind another snow-covered car to wipe the slush out of his eyes. By the time they actually made it the twenty feet into the hotel, they were both soaked and laughing.

"This, too," Kyle told his partner once they'd reached the elevator, and pulled him into a tight hug. "Remember this, too."

"Ffft," Hal said, but his arms tightened around Kyle for a moment before letting go.

It was definitely shaping up to be a pretty good weekend, all things considered.

TBC


	9. Third Law

_The Book Of Oa – Third Law. Physical relationships and love between Green Lanterns is forbidden within the Corps._

No such thing as an actual quiet morning existed on Oa, not since the planet had been reconstituted and the Guardians brought back to life. The very existence of the Corps ensured that something weird happened on a daily basis, and for some inexplicable reason, it seemed that Guy's bar invariably ended up at the forefront. Today, in the wake of hundreds of rings flying back to Oa after the Guardians' newest law, Guy finally had nothing better to do than put his bar back in order.

The new law involved suddenly naming inter-Lantern relationships taboo, leading to hundreds of Corps members quitting rather than split up with their partners. While hundreds out of thousands wasn't as horrific a result as Guy had imagined, it still meant all those rings had to be recalibrated and sent out, and newbies had to be trained – again – and the empty sectors had to be covered. After far too much time dealing with fallout, Guy had gotten the day off, but of course something screwy had to happen.

Telling Hal to go away when he walked into the bar at ten in the morning was a temptation, but Guy resisted it. He also resisted the temptation to make zombie jokes at Hal's expense, because he wasn't _completely_heartless, no matter what everyone else thought, and if even Hal's hair was all flat and lifeless, something had to be going on. He suppressed his misgivings and did not hide behind the bar and wait for Hal to leave, either. He started to regret it when Hal silently grabbed the single bottle of tequila – completely full, seal still unbroken – and a clean glass with the ring. Hal didn't even speak, just started drinking.

The morning only got worse from there. Guy left the closed sign up, locked the door for good measure, and closed the blinds. Maybe if he just dealt with whatever Hal's problem was, or at least got him to go away, nothing else would go wrong. As the level of tequila in the bottle went steadily downwards, Guy was seriously regretting not taking his day off somewhere far, far away with women to be chased and bar fights to be had. When Hal looked up at him and asked if he knew anything about drunken boxing, Guy was distracted enough to answer yes without thinking about it, which only led to Hal asking for a lesson.

"_Not_a good idea." Guy polished the clean mug in his hands for the third time. Even if drunken boxing involved actual alcohol, he didn't know any more about it than what he'd learned in one lesson in college as payment for a tutoring job.

"Is." Hal wasn't even completely upright anymore; he was leaning heavily enough against the bar that Guy was almost sure he was going to fall right off of it.

"Ain't." Maybe if he pushed Hal, just a little.

"How hard-" Hal started.

"So help me, Hal, if you say 'how hard can it be,' I will put an end to this _right now_," Guy warned him, and something in his voice must have penetrated the fog that was clearly in Hal's brain.

"It wasn'_tha'_much tequila. Really. I'm fine," Hal protested, making an only marginally successful effort to sit up straighter.

"People only say that when they're completely wasted," Guy muttered under his breath.

"What?" Hal blinked, leaning forward carefully, pupils so dilated that Guy wasn't sure how he could see anything at all.

"Nothin'," he answered, putting the mug back on the shelf and taking the opportunity to swipe the glass Hal had been using.

"Well?" Hal demanded.

"Well, what?" Guy didn't think he was talking about the glass, but he wasn't about to give that back, either.

"Show me how'ss works." Hal waved his hands around in an extremely vague approximation of some kind of martial art and nearly knocked the tequila bottle over. Guy rescued what remained of it and moved it out of reach.

"I already told you, I ain't showin' you drunken boxing. Not when you're already drunk," he said, not that he thought it was going to help.

"I'm _not_," Hal insisted. He'd managed to stop leaning on the bar, but now he was listing to the right.

"What's this, then? It was full when you started," Guy retorted, waving the tequila bottle. The way Hal's eyes didn't track it was further confirmation of exactly how drunk he was, not that Guy needed said confirmation.

"'M a grown man. I c'n handle a little –" Hal lurched suddenly, clamping his mouth shut.

"Oh, shi-" Guy dove under the bar, searching for a bucket.

"Fine, 'm fine, no problem."

"Yeah, sure." Guy poked his head up to see that Hal did indeed look fine, in that he probably wasn't about to redecorate the floor. "Here."

"Wha'th' fuck – I don' need water, Guy." Hal had forgotten to stop leaning on the bar again, but somehow he still managed to project indignation with every line of his body.

"Shut up and drink it." Guy wrapped Hal's hand around the glass and pulled out the bucket he'd found, just in case.

"Yeah, yeah." Hal took a sip of water, and then another. Guy watched him until he emptied the glass and then refilled it. Hal slowly drank that one, too, not that it had any positive effects that Guy could see.

"Look, I ain't good at this, but I can listen. If, you know, you wanna talk." He didn't know why he said it; it was just that he'd never seen Hal like _this_, not when he was bouncing from job to job after breaking up with Carol Ferris, not after that business in Russia with the woman pilot, never. Hal didn't mope when something went wrong; he picked up and kept going. Occasionally he kept going batshit insane, but Parallax had turned out to be a yellow fear bug and Hal couldn't be entirely blamed for that. Regardless of what Hal had or hadn't done to Guy or anyone else, he was still a friend.

Hal was silent for long enough that Guy gave up on waiting for an answer and started to walk away. "It sucks," he said suddenly and clearly, and Guy stopped moving.

"Yeah?" There wasn't really much else he could say in answer.

"This new law." Hal pushed the glass away with the deliberately careful movements of a man who knows perfectly well how inebriated he is and is trying not to let anyone else find out, but Guy wasn't about to pay attention to Hal's attempts to appear sober with obscene amounts of tequila in him. Of all the things he might have expected to hear from Hal, a complaint about the new law wasn't one of them.

"The… that's what… Hal, who were you…?" He couldn't think of a single woman currently in the Corps with whom playboy Hal spent enough time to be this upset over, and besides, there were rumors about that pilot back on Earth. He spent a lot of time with Kyle, sure, but they couldn't possibly be _serious_.

"I had t'choose," Hal said, quietly enough that Guy had to lean in to hear him. Typical of Hal to ignore even a direct question, Guy thought.

"Must've been somethin' special," he said after a moment, trying to remember who was stationed where and coming up completely blank.

"Had t'choose this." Hal ignored the hint just as thoroughly as he'd ignored directness, and Guy gave up.

"Yeah, man. I know." He refilled Hal's water glass behind the counter and pushed it back into reach.

"This is _who I am_," Hal insisted, words slow and deliberate, wrapping his hands around the glass and blinking earnestly in Guy's general direction. With that lost expression, he looked ridiculously young. He looked almost as if he would cry - _no no no_, Guy chanted under his breath – but then he buried his face in the water glass.

"Yeah, well, it's probably who she is too. Or she'd've quit and you wouldn't be makin' a mess of my bar." Crisis averted – there were limits to what he was willing to sit through for Hal – Guy grabbed a clean rag and started polishing the bar for the fifty millionth time.

He'd gotten all the way down to the other end and back before Hal spoke again. "So you gonna teach me?"

"What?" Guy just stared at him, having no idea where Hal's pickled brain had gone this time.

"Drunk'n boxing," Hal said impatiently, as if the intervening conversation had never taken place.

Guy stared at him for a moment, tempted to ask the "How many fingers?" question, but maybe if he gave Hal a five minute lesson in something that looked like drunken boxing, the man would go away and sleep off the tequila and maybe even deal with his ex-girlfriend and the Guardians' screwy laws. "Fine. Stand up."

Hal grinned, shockingly bright, and slid right off the barstool. Guy waited a moment to see if he'd just lost his balance, but that was so very unfortunately not the case.

"Hal." Nudging Hal with his toe did not produce the desired response – Hal standing up and getting out of his bar – and neither did sparking him with the ring. "Oh, for the love of…"

A crashing sound from the doorway had Guy not only reflexively ringing on his uniform but also surrounding Hal with a protective shield before he saw what had made the noise. He dropped the shield in disgust when he saw that it was just Kyle, a tray of broken glass at his feet. Kyle took a hesitant step forward, the light from the bar falling over him for the first time, and Guy noticed abruptly that the blood had drained from his face. He crossed the floor with quick steps, replacing the shield over Hal and looking for possible damage to Kyle."Are you all right?"

Kyle wasn't physically injured, according to his ring, and Guy saw no sign of a disturbance when he peered outside. He dissolved the shield around Hal _again_and Kyle was across the room like a shot, without answering Guy's question.

"Hal." That one word told Guy everything he didn't want to know about just how involved Hal and Kyle were; like nearly everyone else, he'd thought they had an on-again-off-again fling. It wasn't something Guy wanted to think about, much less see, but Kyle was his partner and Hal was his friend. He wasn't about to condemn either one of them. The look on Kyle's face, though, told him not only how strong the connection between the two of them was, but also why the new law had to be enacted and strictly followed. Neither Hal nor Kyle was capable at this point of thinking clearly where the other was concerned. That could end up losing a fight, a battle, even the entire upcoming war.

"I thought he didn't care," Kyle said, so softly that Guy wasn't sure he was supposed to hear, but Kyle was looking directly at him.

"I'm sorry, kid." It wasn't the right thing to say, but he didn't know what was.

"Would you, um, I- I have to go." Kyle pushed past him, into the bright street outside.

"Yeah," Guy said, but Kyle was already gone. Using the ring to haul Hal (and a bucket, just in case) up to a guest bedroom was absolutely not a matter of personal gain or misuse, nor was using it to clean up the glass Kyle had spilled. Guy relocked the door, leaning against it. Just because the law made some kind of sense after all didn't mean he had to like it. 'What would you do, if it were Tora?' Kyle had asked. He hadn't known then, still didn't. There wasn't a right answer that he could see, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

FINIS


End file.
